


Not just one of your holiday-games

by marlowe78



Series: Parallel issues [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Awesome Donna Noble, Awesome Rose Tyler, Dissociation, Dreams, Fluff, Gen, Hurt Tenth Doctor, Identity Issues, Pete's World (Doctor Who), Relationship Problems, getting sorted, how else to tag this?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-24 21:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 46,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21106523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marlowe78/pseuds/marlowe78
Summary: After meeting Donna Mott, life can not possibly stay as dull as it had been on Pete's World. But it would have been nice to have a sort of transition-period, Rose thought. Better for everyone's health.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will probably make more sense if you read the first part of the series first.

He still didn’t have a name. 

It was strange, he’d never thought much about it before, not during the year he’d been on Pete’s World and certainly not earlier. Since he hadn’t existed, and all that. It had come up in his thoughts once or twice, but only when Donna Mott had asked him for it directly did he ever see that it might be an issue. Not having one. 

He had an official passport, somehow acquired by Pete, which said his name was John Smith, but it felt wrong to actually call himself that. He didn’t mind ‘Doc’ so much but it was usually used by the colleagues at work, or by Pete himself. At work, not in private. For Rose, he was usually ‘you’, like in _”How come you can’t even cook pasta? It’s not science!”_ \- to which he’d reasonably replied _“Exactly, that’s why!”_, but he’d tried to do it right the next time. He just got distracted so much, and if you don’t remember to set a clock – used to be he didn’t _need_ one! – that clock was surprisingly unhelpful and wouldn’t remind him to take the pasta out of the water. Or put it in, for that matter. Good thing the stove shut itself off after a certain amount of time unused, or he’d have burned down their kitchen. Twice. Well – three times. Maybe four.

Anyway, she didn’t _need_ a name for him, he knew when she was talking to him and if he didn’t realize, a name wouldn’t make a difference. Being distracted meant he was completely distracted, and Rose would poke him or throw paper-balls at him to get his attention. That system had worked quite well so far, so he really didn’t understand why now, suddenly, she made such a fuss about his name. 

The lack of it, rather.

“What about Henry?” she’d asked and therefor had prompted his thoughts. Now, he sighed. They were at the breakfast table, both with their bowls of porridge and a big mug of strong tea. He was scribbling ideas into the notebook she’d given him for Christmas – now he finally found a good use for it; he’d always felt bad that the beautiful thing had been sitting empty ever since – and she was reading the paper. 

“Do you think I look like a Henry?” he asked her, and she looked up and frowned at him, turning her head this way and that. Finally, she sighed as well. 

“Not really, no. And I guess I’ll always see Sean Connery or Harrison Ford in tweed, so… guess that’s not such a good idea. But it’s a good name.”

Yes, it was, he had to agree. But so had been Leo and Orwell and Marcus and George and Paul and John. Not Ringo, though. But they’d had laughed a long time over that, so it had its own value. But none of the names she’d test-thrown at him to see if they fit ever really had. Fit.

“Why is it suddenly so important,” he asked her. “It’s not been an issue so far, right? Why now?” 

Rose avoided his gaze and when nothing else came forward, he continued eating. After two bites, he put some more nutmeg on it. She shuddered in mock-disgust. “I can’t believe you like that! Nutmeg, of all things – I could understand cinnamon, or vanilla. But nutmeg?” 

He grinned. “I just like it.” How he’d come to put nutmeg on his oats was a mystery even to him; the Doctor hadn’t ever done that before. Probably some accident while being distracted. Or mopey.  
Either way, he’d been delighted finding something new for himself, something with no memory attached. Nutmeg on oatmeal – great stuff! “Cinnamon is a spice that should not be used except for Christmassy things!” 

It was a well-used argument they kept having. Rose loved cinnamon, on practically anything, and while he didn’t mind it most times, he couldn’t understand her desire to put it on _everything_. Especially on anything containing apples. That was a sin to every apple!  
He still liked it, though, just not as passionate as Rose and that his slight aversion could rile Rose up made it all the better. Little mock-fights over small things were better than big fights over big things. 

He hated the idea of a real fight with her, feared what it might mean. Dreaded the consequences it could have. 

Since meeting this world’s Donna they’d been better, though. Much better. He’d been a lot more distracted, highly intrigued by the idea of someone dreaming of real people, and especially by the highly unlikely coincidence that it would be _Donna_ dreaming of him! But whenever he’d shaken himself back into reality, Rose had looked… better. Not as drained, not as… well. Fearful, maybe. She was just as interested as he was himself in finding out more about it, and they’d worked on it every night since Saturday morning, when Donna had finally had enough of their presence and had kicked them out.

_”Not that you two aren’t highly entertaining and all, but I do have a life and I don’t think you fit that well into it. You have my number, Rose – call me if you want to get some coffee. But I need sleep and I’m not having two strangers camp in my couch! My mom’s due to visit Tuesday and I’ve got some serious cleaning to do until then. So. Shoo!”_

He didn’t like admitting it, but he’d been terrified of leaving. Rose, because she was Rose and would probably know him better than anyone, maybe even better than he would himself, had gently pushed him out and into their – her – car. And on Sunday evening, _she’d_ been the one to pick up the phone and call, asking if maybe she’d left her watch at Donna’s home.

She hadn’t, of course – it was where it belonged, on her wrist. He’d been so grateful for her understanding and relieved that Donna hadn’t vanished again that he’d sagged against the wall onto the carpet. _“I get it, I do,”_ she’d said when she’d dropped next to him. _“I sometimes I wake up at night, scared you’ve vanished and everything has been a dream. And you’ve been here a year already.”_ He’d taken her hand and kissed her fingers, then pressed it against his heart. 

He was hoping that she knew what he meant by that. She was Rose Tyler, after all. 

“It’s just… doesn’t it bother you?” she asked now, without looking at him. He tried to get his head back into the question – ah, right. Names.

“No, not really.” The porridge had gotten cold and he pushed the bowl away. Cold oats – eugh. “I mean, I’ve not used any kind of name for quite a long time already. Well… not me, I guess, but him. Me-him.” He looked up, meeting her gaze. “The Doctor, I mean.” 

“Right. I don’t even know _his_ name, I guess. It never mattered. Does…” she frowned. “Does anyone apart from him know?” 

“I do.” She perked up. “Nope, not telling you,” he prevented the question, but other than before, the awkward tension that used to be in the room when she’d asked about things the Doctor had done or would do was not present. It felt … well. Nice. Normal. Not bad, anyway. He smiled. “It’s neither a funny name nor something mysterious, it’s just that even here, names have power and you never know when anything or anyone might pop up and use it.” There was a reason, after all, that he’d chosen to hide behind a title. 

Rose pouted, but it was in jest. “So, who else knows?” 

“Well. There’s the Master, for one, but he’s dead now.” It still hurt, surprisingly. The Master had been a constant threat and a formidable and twisted adversary. He’d done appalling things, truly monstrous things, especially before his death, but … he’d been the last one, hadn’t he? The last of the Time Lords, not counting the Doctor, and knowing his other part so well, he understood why he’d forgiven the Master in the end. 

Not that _he_ necessarily agreed to the sentiment. He could probably forgive him for what he’d done to the Doctor, but it was hard feeling any kind of forgiveness for murdering so many people, torturing Martha’s family – and Jack. Could there be a version of Jack Harkness in this world? Or rather, would there be in the future? Would they ever meet? Ah – distraction, back on track. Where had he been…Oh, yes. Torture. 

No, he thought. No, he wouldn’t forgive the Master for all that. Because erasing the year and installing all the murdered people back except for those on the Valiant didn’t erase what he’d _done_. It still happened, and consequences, the Doctor had learned long ago – are necessary. Then again, maybe that was all the Doctor could do. Forgive the sins done towards him, not forgive _every_ sin. Especially since it wasn’t his place to forgive what had been done to Martha’s family. That was their sin to forgive, not his. But whenever he’d taken time to think the Master’s end through, and his – well, the Doctor’s – words to him, he ended up at the very same conclusion. He’d have taken the Master with him, too. Not because he didn’t deserve punishment. _Because_ the Master deserved punishment. No prison would have held him, no matter how sophisticated. And people were easily compromised, even if those people weren’t human – the Master would have found someone to help him escape eventually. 

To keep him secure, he’d _have_ to be in the Tardis, close to the Doctor. That, or death. And death, he understood now that he had taken the time to analyse everything, death would not have been punishment at all. Death was, after all, something to embrace. Something you had to _deserve_, not just long for. 

Maybe that was another reason why Martha had left. Because she’d not have understood, because she couldn’t ever understand the incredible _hole_ being alone in the world left in you Being alone where she you’ve never been alone, not like this, before. And she’d never been able to understand how truly terrifying it would be for the Master to be alone with the other last of his kind, someone you didn’t actually like very much. And how terrifying for the Doctor. 

“Wow. So this Master knows, but I don’t? I think that’s a bit… wrong, don’t you agree?” Rose brought him back to the present and out of the moment on the Valiant’s floor, holding his old friend’s body and wishing for things to have been different, so different so long ago. 

“It’s got nothing to do with you,” he assured her gently, understanding that it must sting a bit. Names seemed to be really important to Rose – he’d never have guessed. “It’s just… the Master had been my – his – friend since they were children. It’s only later that he went completely mad and megalomaniac. I doubt the Doctor would have voluntarily given him his name if they’d met later in life.” It seemed to pacify her, but she was like a dog with a bone. 

“So, who else? You said ‘for one’, so there’s more who know your name. Are they all dead?” 

He thought. “You know, I think they are.” Everyone from Gallifrey who might have remembered him was dead, after all. Obliviated. “Maybe … maybe River…”

“River?” 

He shook himself out of the memory. “Oh, yes. River Song. Fantastic name, fantastic woman. Met her in the library – did I ever take…” he stopped, rewinding the sentence. “No, he didn’t, did he? Take you to the Library?” 

Rose frowned. “In the Tardis? Of course he did.”

“No no. _The_ Library. It contains every book ever written, and every book that will be written. A fantastic place, unbelievable. And CAL – the filing-system. It’s based on … well, no, it actually _is_ the mind of a little girl. It’s so –“ He stopped, realizing she was giving him the mocking look she got when he went off a tangent. “Oh. Well, I – he – met this archaeologist… Funny, I never asked why a group of archaeologists would visit a library, even one that ate people…”

“It _ate_ people? The library ate people?” 

“No, it didn’t, it saved them! Just… Sorry, I’ll tell you the story later. It’s a good one, you’d have liked it there.” Not so much being saved, he’d imagine. Rose never liked being stuck anywhere and had a knack of realizing when someone played a game with her mind. “Anyway, River. She met us there, and she apparently knew the Doctor. And he… didn’t. They’d never met before, but she had this diary, and it said that they _would_ meet! And often. In the future.”

“But wait,” Rose interrupted. “How can she be from the future, meet you in the past and still know who you are? I thought you can’t cross the timelines, or bad things happen!”

“You can’t. I don’t know how she knew me – well, him. But she did, and she said I was young,” he snorted “and then, because I - he.” Dammit, this was getting annoying. “The Doctor didn’t have time to figure it out, there was too much running involved.” 

Rose grinned. “I love the running.” 

He beamed back at her. “Me too! And in the end, River…” His smile vanished as he remembered being chained to the rail as once again, someone stole the sacrifice of his life right out from the Doctor’s nose, leaving him to live with the aftermath. “She… she saved him. And it killed her. But before all that, because the Doctor was being a stubborn prat who didn’t trust her, she whispered his name in his ear so he’d stop mistrusting her. So somewhere in the future, the Doctor will tell this woman his real name.” He glanced at Rose. “Not before I’ve been created, and I’d guess not before another regeneration. But it was not just a whim, why he told her. Because she knew the Doctor’s name, he knew he’d have to save her. Because his future self knew that he’d _already_ saved her. Akh… crossed timelines is such a messy business. I’m just glad that she’s not dead. Well.”

“Well?” 

“Well, physically, she’s very much dead. But her conscience had been saved and so in the 51st century, her … soul, I guess, is living in the Library’s mainframe. I hope she’s happy there…”, he mused. 

“Okay. But apart from that, in that other universe, only that one woman with the whacked-out timeline knows his name, and in this one… nobody does?”

“Welllll… that depends.” 

“On what?”

“If there’s a Doctor in this universe or not.” 

Rose gasped. “You mean… there could be a … another version of you – him – running around here?” Astonishingly, it looked like she’d never thought of this before. He’d certainly thought about it quite a lot, wondering what it would mean, meeting _another_ Doctor. Would they recognize each other? Would he be like the Doctor from their original universe? Would he have committed genocide as well? Or maybe he’d be dead, or some brainless, stick-up-the-arse Time Lord like the rest of the tiresome bunch. Would he steal his Rose?

And then he’d unavoidably think: maybe he had a Tardis, and maybe it would be possible to steal it. But that little thought was very hidden, and he only took it out when he was completely certain that he was alone. And he hid it quickly again, after admiring the idea for a few moments. 

It was too tempting. Because he definitely would steal it. Probably be killed in one of the journeys, but maybe not, and that little _maybe_ was enough for him to dream about it. 

“There could be, yes. But the Torchwood-archives of this world never said anything about him, so he probably hasn’t been around. Anyway, if he’s here, he’d have the same name, and I don’t… I don’t want to risk it.”

Rose stood up and put their bowls away, scrapping out his left-over oats that had become stuck like glue against the ceramic. She filled them with water and left them on the sink, not much fonder of cleaning than he was. “I guess I understand that, yes. So – I’ll live with never knowing it, then.” 

“It’s really not that impressive. Just a name, you know. Not much different from… I don’t know, Bob, I guess.” 

She snorted. “Right. Bob, the Time Lord. I think that’s a perfect name. Let’s call him Bob, yes?” He grinned back in agreement, already imagining the glee the two of them would have with calling him Time Lord Bob. “But…” Rose bit on her nail, then stopped and glared at her hand as if it had flung itself into her mouth and between her teeth. “’s just. ‘S not right, not having a name.”

“Again, why is it so important, suddenly? We were getting by fine, right?” 

Rose turned and glared at him. “You call that ‘fine’? We hardly talked to each other, you walked around like a… a… like a ghost, an empty shell, and everything I tried wasn’t working!” He felt anger rise in him, bubbling to the surface. Much quicker than it had inside the Doctor, as far as he could tell. And he should be able to tell, shouldn’t he? Human emotions were so much more volatile – or maybe it was just because he was basically brand-new and hadn’t learned to get a grip.

But before he could speak – yell, more likely – Rose continued. “And instead of making things better, I only made it worse! And then it took some stranger to make me realize that you _didn’t even have a name!_.” There were tears running down her face and she wiped them away hastily. “I never even noticed.” Her voice broke and her breath hitched. 

And as fast as it had risen, as quickly did the anger drain away. He stood and walked over to her, pulled her against him and held her tightly. “Shh. It really doesn’t matter.” 

“No,” she sniffed against his shirt. “No, you don’t understand.” Rose looked up into his eyes, and there was so much sadness and regret that it felt like a punch to the gut. “I never even asked. I assumed you were the Doctor, but I didn’t want you to be and so I never called you that. I never bothered to find out that you didn’t want that name, either.” She gripped him tighter, as if to fuse them together. “I’m such a selfish cow.” 

He held her close and rocked them a little in their kitchen. She was still so young, only just an adult. And she’d been thrust in a life with a man she knew but didn’t, a person who didn’t even know himself very much. He wouldn’t go so far as to lay the blame for this mess on his own doorstep alone, since it was still hard to not break out into tears for everything he’d lost and for the hard knot of betrayal that sat in his stomach, caused by his other self, _him_self. But blame certainly couldn’t lie with this wonderful person, this unbelievably resilient, fascinating, thrilling and above all _young_ person. 

“No, you’re not. You really aren’t, Rose, believe me. I … you tried your best, and I don’t think anyone could do better than you. I love you, understand? I’d do anything for you, absolutely anything. But I can’t be someone I’m not… not anymore. If I could get him back for you, I would. In a heartbeat.” 

Abruptly, she pushed away from him. “No. Don’t even think that. I don’t want him back. He… no. Maybe at first…” she sniffed. “Maybe longer than I like to admit. But not now, not anymore.” Her face turned dark, something terrifying crossed her features. “He didn’t even think what this might do to us, me and you, both. He just thought ‘wow, great solution, Rose can have her Doctor and that other bloke can’t create mischief with the timelines – perfect solution for everyone. Here, Rose, have a _toy_” she spat the word and had she not gripped him tight, he’d have recoiled from the acid in her voice. “You’re not a toy. You’re … well you’re you, a person, someone with a heart and a soul. Not some substitute. And I’m not a caretaker for old, unfashionable playthings. We deserve _better_, you and me! We deserve _the best_. We deserve our own lives and our own adventures, and that includes you having your own name. You’re not _him_, you should have something for yourself that’s only yours.”

“Like a name,” he whispered into her hair, finally getting what she’d been trying to tell him. 

Rose nodded. “Yes. I should have asked earlier, but I didn’t. And I… I’m truly sorry I never made an effort.” 

It didn’t matter that he didn’t care about a name. Rose cared, because it represented something, something … valuable. An identity, apart from where he’d come from. 

A distinction, because apparently for Rose, he wasn’t just a poor copy, a faulty version of the man she wanted. 

He smiled, a true smile that warmed his heart. Yes. Maybe it was time to put the Doctor to rest and let him have his life, his adventures, without craving them for himself. Maybe it was time – no, it was _definitely_ time – to stop wanting the unachievable and find the possibilities. Focus on what he’d actually been _given_ by being left in Pete’s World, with Rose. What the Doctor had gifted this poor, half-breed copy of himself.

He’d given him a family, a life. Near-endless possibilities, something completely new and unknown. He’d given him Rose, possibly – probably – no, definitely – understanding that by doing that, he’d lose her for himself forever, truly forever, more so than just with them being in parallel worlds. 

That old bastard. Never liked taking the easy road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from T.S. Elliot "The naming of cats"
> 
> Full quote:  
*The naming of cats is a difficult matter,  
it isn't just one of your holiday games*
> 
> Brownie-points if you understand why I chose it ;-)
> 
> If you find any grave errors, please let me know.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose held on to… well, to him, him-with-no-name, like he’d disappear if she let him go. She didn’t know, he might. After all, she’d just basically told him how awful she’d been and he would have every reason to just leave her, angry and upset and deeply hurt. 

But when she carefully released the pressure, he was still just there, still breathing into her hair and it felt like he was actually smiling on top of her head. Huh. Reluctantly, she let go of him and took a step back. 

There was so much fondness in his eyes, so much … love, she supposed. It was similar to the look Pete gave her mum, so it wasn’t a completely unreasonable assumption. He’d also told her that he loved her, so. Love. 

Fondness and love, a bit like the Doctor’s, but also a bit different. Maybe this strange comparison would work better for her if she imagined the two of them being twins. Similar in so many ways, and yet separate persons, both their own. She smiled at him and hoped she didn’t look like a complete mess, teary-eyed and snot-nosed. He didn’t seem to mind, though. 

“We’ll find a name, okay? One of these days, something might fit. Just... not Brian,” he joked, and she smiled for real. 

“No, not Brian. I dated a Brian once – he smelled like onions all the time. Tasted like them, too.” He shuddered and she laughed, finally sure he wouldn’t leave. “Now. Does this dream-thing work two ways? Have you dreamed about her at all?”

He shook his head. “Already thought about it. Not that I recall. Well – I’ve kind of dreamed of _Donna_, but those were… you know, from the other universe. Never seen this Donna in my life…” 

She grinned, because she could see that he wanted to add _”That’s not too long, though,”_ but swallowed it. So Rose said it instead and grinned at his beaming smile. 

“True. But as far as I _can_ remember, never dreamed of her.” 

“Did you dream about me?” 

“All the time.” He answered without pause. “Just… nothing that felt remotely real, or voyeuristic. And certainly not mundane.” There was the cheeky grin again, and she smirked. “Do… you?”

She shook her head. “I dream a lot. Sometimes about us, sometimes about him and me, sometimes about him being dead…” she stopped, because sometimes she dreamed about _him_ being dead, and those usually left her in a cold sweat and gasping for breath. “But not about you just sitting on the couch and tinkering. And nothing of that sort about anyone else, as far as I can say.”

“Hmm.” He frowned, his gaze going slightly glassy and far away. “Interesting.” 

When he didn’t continue, she prompted. “And? What does it mean?”

It startled him out of his absent state and he visibly shook himself back into reality. “I have absolutely no idea.” Then he beamed at her, full-wattage smile. “Isn’t it brilliant?”

****

Further investigations – meaning questioning Pete and Jackie, and asking subtle questions around work, which were, probably, not at all subtle and possibly rude, judging from the reactions of his co-workers – didn’t turn up any more realistic dreams. Neither did Rose’s snooping in her workspace and around her friends. Whatever it was, it seemed to be focused only on Donna Mott, and that was strange because as far as he could tell, Donna wouldn’t have any reason to be so much different from Donna Noble.

Then again, he couldn’t be sure. So he spent a day and a night building a sonic screwdriver – really, he chastised himself, how pathetic to not having one already. It’d been a _year_! – and fitted it with DNA-recognition for pretty much every being in the universe he could remember. 

It was quite a lot, he was happy to notice. 

Now, he only needed to go back to Donna and test her and see if there was some strange alien DNA in her blood. And yes, of course he’d added a huon-particle-recognition-software! Then he remembered and put on his void-stuff-glasses, put on his jacket and turned to go. 

“Where’re you off to?” Rose asked, stamping her feet on the mat and dropping the shopping-bags on the floor. Had she been out? He’d been talking to her for the last hour or so! She looked at him, then at his clothes and scrunched up her forehead. “You’re not going out like this, are you? It’s bloody freezing outside!” Judging from her wet jacket, rain might be an issue, too. 

He looked down at himself. Trainers, cargo-like jeans – he liked his jeans; they were durable and had so many pockets! – a shirt and a sweater and a jacket. Where was the problem? 

Rose sighed. “Seriously. You can’t go out like that, you’ll freeze. You’ll get wet and cold and you don’t have any body-fat at all! And because you’ll probably get distracted by a kitten or a horsefly, you won’t even notice until your fingers turn blue.”

She might have a point, he admitted. There was just… “I… uh, I don’t think I have anything warm to wear.” He grimaced. “Sorry?”

Once more sighing, Rose grabbed his hand and pulled him to their bedroom and to the wardrobe. “You really don’t notice much, do you?” she muttered, then started pulling out a warm, woollen sweater, a pair of fantastically colourful woollen socks, bent down to get a pair of leather-boots from the bottom and finally threw him a long-ish warm parka. 

“Uhm.” He looked down on the pile of clothes in his arms. “When…?” 

“Weeks ago. You even tried them on! I…” She looked at him with a strange mixture of amusement, resignation and worry. “Really. Please tell me this scatter-brainedness will stop sometime. It…” She bit her lips. “It worries me.”

He sat on the bed, taking off his Converse and changing his socks with his eyes set fully on the task. It might be to avoid her earnest eyes, because usually, changing socks didn’t take that much concentration. “I really don’t know. I think – but that’s just … you know, speculation – that it’s got more to do with me being…” He looked up. “In a really bad mood?” She raised her eyebrows at him, clearly and wordlessly stating ‘no – really?!’. But it was better than the worry. “I hope it is, because that might mean I can do something about it. Then again, it could be some biochemical thing that’s coming from having a … a wrong brain in a wrong body. Which might be temporary, which I really hope. Or it’s… uh. Yes, no. I’m sure it’s going to get better. I’m sure, Rose.” 

He wasn’t, and she clearly saw right through him. But she smiled a tight smile that turned a little softer and gave him the benefit of doubt. “Fine. But until then, I think I’ll stick very close to you. You’d just been about to walk out the door without even leaving a note! Again!”

“To be fair, I thought you were here and we’d been talking. I had a whole conversation with you, but now in hindsight it was probably just me, talking to myself.” No. That sentence didn’t reassure her. He should have guessed. “I wanted to talk to Donna again. I’ve built a new screwdriver! To see if she’s got some alien stuff in or on her, that makes her dream about… uh, me.”

Rose’s eyes went wide. “You want to go to that very kind woman you just met a few nights ago and scan her with your sonic-thing, wearing 3D-glasses? She’d have called the police on you! She’d think you’re mental!”

Oh. Right, that was a possibility. He looked up at her. “So, are you coming with me, then?”

“Of course,” she sighed. “But let me put the milk in the fridge and get something dry to wear.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him along – still only clad in socks, the sweater and boots still on the bed – into the kitchen. “Not letting go of you until I can trust you won’t forget me again.”

Fair point. Not that he minded, at all.

****

In the car, he tested his sonic’s settings on Rose and himself. No alien organs apart from his four-strand-DNA, nothing that could be spotted as not-human without further probing. In a way, that was shocking and disappointing – there had apparently been a bit of hope inside him that he’d be something not _completely_ human. But it was also a relief, as he could now find reference-points for everything his new body – no, his _only_ body – did by looking up human anatomy. Maybe even psychology, though he doubted that there was a lot of material about people going mad from having the wrong memories inside their head.

Then again, humanity had a way of surprising the Doctor. One never knew, with them.

“Stop doing that, please. It’s annoying and I don’t want us to crash. It’s too shitty outside to have to wait for a tow-truck,” Rose murmured at him after he’d waved his sonic over her for the third time. He put it away. “Wow, this weather is really something. I mean, wasn’t it enough to be cold and rainy, now it’s gotta be sleet, too?”

The weather had indeed picked up its game. It was getting dark. Four-thirty was still a normal time for that, he noted, only slightly disappointed by the ordinariness of the weather. February was supposed to be dark and wet in England, so there was probably nothing sinister at play. 

“Here, take my phone,” Rose handed him the small mobile, “call Donna. She’d be in from work, I suppose. I don’t want us to just barge in.” At his dubious look, she continued, smiling. “We can’t behave like the Doctor; we’re going to have to stay here and _live_ here. Getting arrested will mean us having a lot of problems on the long run, even with Pete being who he is. And – I imagine you want her on your side. Not alienating her is a good way to do that.”

Good point. He found her number on the phone and called. _”Hello?”_

“Hello, it’s me. We’re on our way to see you, I hope you’re at home. Do you have tea? Should we pick some up on the way?” Wait – didn’t people usually bring gifts when they went visiting? “I just realized we don’t actually have anything gift-like. Anyway, we could stop and buy tea. Or milk? Sugar? You seemed to like sugar. Or hey, biscuits – we could probably scrounge up some biscuits. Do you prefer the dark chocolate ones or rather milk-chocolate? Ah, I guess we can just bring both-“ He noticed that there was no response or even any kind of reaction, so he stopped talking. “Hello? I am talking to a person, right? Not an answering machine?”

There was silence, but he could have sworn he heard breathing. Just as he was convinced he’d gotten the wrong number somehow, Donna spoke. _”Excuse me, but _who_ am I talking to? Or rather, who is talking to _ me_? Who are you?”_

Oh, right. “Oh, sorry, forgot to mention that. The guy from your dreams, of course.. What?” he asked at Rose’s snort from the driver’s side. 

“Nothing, go on.” She was still giggling and he mentally re-wound what he’d said. “Oooooh. Oh, not like _that_, not those kinds of dreams. Well – at least I hope that hasn’t changed? Because that would be weird, since…” 

Donna interrupted, and she did sound amused. Good. Amused was good. _”All right, all right. I got it, you’re the guy from the bridge who still has not told me his name. Well – I just came home, so I guess if you don’t mind the mess in my kitchen, you’re welcome. And I’ve got tons of biscuits here, my mom always brings me more food than anyone could eat. Guess she still doesn’t believe that I’m capable of living on my own,” _ she grumbled, and there was a brief flash of anger he felt at that. Sylvia Noble had been one of the persons that the Doctor – and by default, he – hadn’t particularly liked. She’d undermined Donna’s beautiful spirit at every instance he – the Doctor – had ever met her, and considering Donna’s attitude towards herself, that was rather the norm than the exception. 

He just hoped Sylvia Mott was different. He really wouldn’t like getting into an argument with her, at least not until he got his high-flying emotions a little better under control. 

“Okay, great. We’ll be there in-“ 

He looked at Rose, who yelled in the direction of the phone: “Ten minutes, more or less! If we don’t drown on the way, that is…” 


	3. Chapter 3

Back in Kensington, Rose took the time to look at the house and the neighbourhood a little more closely. Last time, she’d been mostly worried and hadn’t cared all that much. 

The houses looked well-kept and friendly-warm, especially in this weather. There was a faint glow of lights from most of the windows, and some of them still had Christmas-decorations on the front-steps or around the doors. Whatever this Donna was doing, she seemed to be fine, financially-wise. Rose doubted he would pick up on that. He was as notoriously bad at recognizing monetary value as the Doctor had been. Either he didn’t understand the concept, or – more than likely – he just didn’t care enough to bother. 

When Donna opened the door, her hair was wet in the freshly-washed and not-yet-dried way and there was still a faint trace of her shampoo surrounding her. She wore a fluffy, incredibly comfortable-looking sweater and Rose was instantly jealous. Her own clothes were dry but she’d just had time to grab the closest items from the washing-line in their bathroom before he’d dragged her out, impatient and incredibly infectious in his haste. The blue sweater was fine, but it was a bit too thin for this weather, and the moment she took off her jacket, she knew she should have taken the time to get a better one from the wardrobe. 

“Ah, the spaceman and his girlfriend. Come in, and yes, I have tea.”

They entered and Rose kept him back a little on the stairs. “Spaceman?” she whispered, and he nodded. 

“She thought I was ‘spaced out’ the first time we met, so… Nearly bugged my eyes out when she called me that.” 

“Oh, you were being weird again, huh?” Rose smirked, and he looked very cute, affronted. 

“Hello? I’d just been minding my own business and there’s suddenly this person from the other world, telling me off exactly like uh,” he lowered his voice “_Donna_ would do. Of course I spaced out!” 

Rose giggled and pushed him along to the living-room. Donna sat on the couch and gestured to the mugs and tea-pot on the table. “Help yourselves. I’m not in the mood to be a good host today – work was completely bonkers.”

He poured the tea for both of them and added the exact right amount of sugar for Rose, which made her smile and gave her heart a little jolt. Strange, how such little things from him made her feel more than anything really grand Mickey had ever done. 

She missed Mickey, terribly. More than she would admit to anyone, really. Sure, she’d always be sorry for the way she’d treated his love for her, but he’d been her best mate for so long, his friendship was so much more important than their relationship, really. And now that he was gone, the space he’d occupied in her heart was just an empty space, not yet filled with someone else. 

Maybe that was why she was hoping this Donna would turn out to be good for him-with-no-name-yet. She’d been the Doctor’s best friend – and by extension, that meant also his – in the other universe, something even the best love-relationship could not replace completely. And theirs wasn’t exactly ‘the best’. 

Not yet, anyway. 

“So, you never said – where do you work, Donna?” Rose sipped her tea as he slumped down beside her, close enough that she could feel his warmth and smell the soap from the shower this morning. A little bit of sweat, mixed in with the wool-y hint from the jumper, and it was instantly comforting. 

“Oh, I work for Deer and Hawthorne, on Rixington, in the shopping-centre. You have no idea how many people need to go on vacation during the dark months, it’s horrific. Well, good for business, but seriously… so much to do and so many _rude_ people! It’s not our fault they need to get away, and just because they feel the need to escape doesn’t mean it goes any faster than it goes! There’s Zep-ticket-arrangements and hotel-bookings and all that. It takes bloody time and effort!”

“You’re a travel-agent?”, she clarified, mostly for his benefit, as he clearly had no clue what Donna was talking about. “That’s cool. Do you travel much yourself?” Maybe she’d picked up something… strange from a different country? Like a dream-of-real-people-flu, or something.

“Me? No, oh no. Do you have any idea how much I get paid there? Certainly not enough to go lollygagging around the world.”

Rose looked around. The furniture was basic but well-kept, everything was nice and looked lived-in. It was cosy and warm and looked, most of all, loved. “Oh. I thought, with the flat…” 

A cloud crossed Donna’s face, and she averted her gaze. “It belonged to my father, but he died a few years back. Left it all to me.” She grimaced in an attempt to convey humour. “Drives my mum mad, me getting the flat and she getting nothing. But it’s not me he had a problem with, so why shouldn’t I?” 

“Right, yes. So, what we’re here to ask you, -“ he interrupted the following awkward tension, and Rose pinched him through the jeans. It was much harder than pinching through suit-trousers, but she liked him in jeans. “What?” he asked, then caught on. “Oh, of course, so sorry about your father! I’m uh… a little bad with social cues. So sorry.”

Luckily, Donna didn’t take offence and chuckled. “It’s alright. Never thought you came by to ask about my family-history. And the dream-stuff is really strange, now that I know you’re actually real and all.”

“Uh… would that be a problem? Your family-history? Because we might get to that…” he stopped, caught Rose’s gaze, and teetered off with “…if that would be alright, of course.”

“What we wanted to know,” Rose caught the thread in the conversation, hoping to lead it into safe waters, “is why you’re dreaming about him. It is a little strange, after all.”

“You think? Considering _he’s_ quite strange, it seems rather fitting.” 

“Oi!” he interjected, but seemed comfortable to let Rose lead the talking. 

“Well – yes. We both are kind of… we deal with weird and strange. Work-related. Sometimes, at least.” 

“Oh, you mean something like the ‘Y-Files’? On telly,” she clarified when neither of them seemed to catch her meaning. “With that handsome guy and the blond whacko agent who believes her brother was abducted by aliens. Never really believed there’s an agency like that for real, but then again… with all the tin-men from last year…” she shuddered. 

He took back the conversation. “Oh – uh, yes. In a way. The show is completely different from what we do, but… it’s a good simile.” He nodded. “So, to get back to it – have you had anymore dreams about me?”

Donna thought back. “No, I don’t think so. But during lunch in the café I’ve asked Sherill, she works with me, and she’d told me she’d been dreaming about this bloke for _ages_. Just some random person, she said she’d never met him, but he’d been in her dreams all the time. And then William from Pence and Spencer – he eats with us, sometimes – joined in and said he’d been dreaming about this strange woman with bad teeth who always feeds stray cats and pigeons in the park. About every few weeks, he says, she appears in his dreams and does incredibly boring stuff.” 

Rose blinked, looked across to him and saw a similar dumbfounded expression on his face. Except his was much more absent, as his brain was probably running the variables and equations to see if they fit anything he might remember from the Doctor’s travels. 

“Do you think that’s connected?” Donna asked a bit apprehensive. “It is a rather big coincidence, right?” 

He reached into one of his side-pockets, but before he could take out the sonic, he stopped himself and looked at Donna. “Okay, so – I’ve got this thing, it’s a… scanner, of sorts. Would it be alright with you if I … scanned you? Just to make sure there’s nothing… strange on you?”

She gasped. “What? You think I’ve got some disease? Maybe I got infected with something? Is it dangerous? Oh my god – did I infect everyone?” 

“No no,” he hastened, “I’m pretty sure – well… reasonably certain – that it’s nothing contagious. At least if it were, it’d be something that works really slow, since Rose and I haven’t dreamed about anyone…” he petered off. “That’s not reassuring you, is it?” Donna shook her head silently, and Rose had to suppress a giggle. Would so not be appropriate! “Sorry. I’m still certain it’s nothing of that sort. So. May I?”

Nodding, Donna sat up a little. “What do I do? Do I have to do something? I’m not taking off my clothes, mister, don’t you even ask!”

“Why would you…” he was astonished at her suggestion, as if the idea wouldn’t even cross his mind. Rose knew it actually, truly wouldn’t – he wasn’t wired that way. She was certain – she’d tried some double-entendres in the first weeks with him. It hadn’t gone anywhere. He either really didn’t get it or pretended not to – either way, he’d looked mostly clueless and sometimes deeply embarrassed, and she’d stopped. 

In hindsight, that was probably a very smart decision on her part. Adding sex into the powder-keg their relationship had turned into would have probably broken something irreparably. 

“I’ll just wave this” he showed Donna the screw-driver “around you, that’s all. Won’t even be a minute. Just as a fair warning – I might get rude if there’re results. I tend to forget people are around when I find something interesting.” He put on the 3-D-glasses for a minute, then shook his head and put them into his pocket.

At Donna’s raised eyebrow in her direction, Rose nodded. “Oh yes, he does that. You get used to it and learn to stock up on paper-balls.”

“I can hear you,” he sing-songed, but a smile was showing in his eyes. He seemed really happy, and that, in return, made Rose very happy, too.


	4. Chapter 4

The sonic didn’t turn up anything. No DNA-traces, no huon-particles – not that they should have been able to be responsible for this, but you never knew, it was a different universe, after all. The rules might differ in some astonishing ways, even if they hadn’t, so far. And no void-stuff, either.

There was really nothing on Donna that would suggest any outside influence. If she hadn’t told them about the other people from her work-area, he’d have said she was psychic. 

Randomly psychic, just tuned into _him_ of all people in this city. Yeah – fair lot of chance. 

“So?” Donna asked, and he noticed that he was still standing there with the bleeping screwdriver, staring at the display. 

Embarrassed, he put the device away. “No, uh – sorry. Nothing. Which is really strange – there should be _something_ that makes you special.”

“Oi!” she complained and he stared at her in shock. He’d basically repeated what he’d said to Donna Noble the first time they’d met. 

“Sorry! No – I didn’t mean that you’re not special. You’re a wonderful person and so … wonderful, and…” he stopped himself before he made an even bigger mess of things. “At least, I’m sure you are. Judging purely from what I’ve seen of you so far.” He might have blushed – couldn’t be sure without a mirror. 

A glance towards Rose let him catch a smirk, so it was very probable that he did. “It must have something to do with your work-place, if other people from there have similar dreams about strangers. Are the dreams prophetic? Like – do they happen before he” she pointed at him “is doing things, or are they synchronized? Delayed?”

“Oh,” Donna thought. “Well, did you ever tinker with the toaster at night?” He nodded, which seemed to be strange. “Really? You tinker with bits of toaster in the middle of the night? Why? I thought you two were a couple, don’t you have better things to do than building a toaster? Though,” she raised her hands as if to ward of an evil spirit “I’m completely grateful that _that_ is not something I dream about.” 

“When else should I build the toaster?” he asked, because really… he couldn’t just take it with him to work, and when he got home Rose cooked and tried to teach him or they went out to eat and to have fun or had a fight. All of those situations seemed, to his mind, not exactly ideal for toaster-tinkering.

Rose giggled and Donna just rolled her eyes. No really… what had he done now? Luckily, Donna didn’t linger and continued. “Well, anyway. Since you’re working at night and probably sit on your couch at night, too, there’s really nothing to tell the time. Except – there’s the bridge-thing. But I had fallen asleep on the couch and I can’t say when exactly I dreamed. I mean – can anyone, really?”

“Oh, yes. If you put and EEG on a sleeper, you can usually see quite clearly when someone falls into the REM-phase of sleeping, which is when the body is motionless, mostly, but the eyes move. Hence the name, Rapid Eye Movement. Smart choice of acronyming, I always thought.” Huh – maybe they could convince Donna to put on an EEG-cap for the night? Maybe if they also had a camera in her bedroom, they’d be able to time it. Problem was, the dreams didn’t happen daily, so they might need to repeat it a few times and even as someone with social-cue-issues, he understood that Donna might not be comfortable with that. 

He was still thinking about building a very small EEG-scanner, and how that would work and how he could put it in her bedroom and more importantly, convince Donna to _let_ him put it there that he missed Rose continuing the talk. The conversation played in the back of his mind, he was aware of it, but it didn’t register.

“What do you mean with bridge?”

“Oh, day I met him, he was sitting on that bridge over the river, freezing his balls off. Thought I’ll check it out before I might read about it in the papers the next day, just in case he actually was real. Turns out he was, so…”

“What was he doing on a bridge? What were you doing on a bridge?”

There was a pause and his thoughts stopped, he made a mental bookmark to get back to the little circuit-board he’d imagined and tuned back into the room. Rose had asked him something, apparently, so he replayed what he’d heard-but-not-listened-to. Bridge?

Oh, right! “Uh, just sitting. Watching the city, watching the water. Just… you know.”

“Thinking?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“Pretty much the opposite, to be honest. Just… not thinking. Only watching.” A bit of a lie – he’d thought about their talk, after all, and about being so moody. Oh, maybe he could admit to that, it sounded quite normal and related back to what they’d been talking about that night. “Being a bit mopey, maybe.”

“He looked a proper mess in my dreams,” Donna interjected, and he glared at her. Didn’t seem to faze her in the least, of course, and it stung to see her cocky smirk. _Donna_ used to look so much like that. 

“I’m sure I didn’t. Anyway, I had only been there for about… uh…” how long did it take for a human backside to turn numb in the cold? It must have been around one to maximum five degrees, not yet freezing but cold and windy. So… maybe ten minutes? Twenty? He’d been a lot colder if it had been more, right? 

Internally, he cursed. There should be a big itinerary of human physiology inside his head, but it seemed to slip away from him right now. “Maybe thirty minutes, an hour would be the absolute maximum,” he guessed aloud. “Allowing for your travel-time to reach the bridge – what was it, twenty minutes?” She thought, then nodded. “I’d say… if this is true, then they’re actually slightly precognitive, your dreams. Huh.”

“So, where does that leave us, Doct… Doc?” Rose asked. “Anything in that brain of yours that might get us closer to a solution?”

Sadly, there wasn’t. Oh, he knew quite a lot of folks _capable_ of creating psychic links, even between complete strangers. But why anyone would do that, to random people in London, he couldn’t imagine. What benefits came from that? Maybe it was just a side-effect, but that option – though very much possible – led to even less narrowing-down of suspects. “No,” he finally admitted. “But how about we go and have a look at your department-store, Donna.” He grinned, but Donna didn’t seem to be too interested in coming with them. Rose, though, had perked up and was already standing, taking her mug with her to probably – he couldn’t be sure, but it seemed reasonable and a Rose-thing to do – bring it in the kitchen.

He followed her lead. 

“Well, have fun, you two. It’s closed, though – after six, they lock the doors and nobody without a key can get inside the store.” At his look, she shook her head. “Nope, don’t have a key myself. Our office opens at nine, and by then every outside-door is already opened. Maybe the night-watchman will let you in, but I doubt it. He’s a bit of a stickler, that bloke.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s go, Rose – and Donna, thank you for the tea.” He grabbed her hand and shook it, probably with too much enthusiasm but it felt right. Maybe he had hoped she’d come with them and help, be curious and adventurous, but this Donna wasn’t the same. And even the other Donna had taken a while to get used to the excitement and hazards and well… fun that running around with the Doctor entailed. Maybe this one would do, too.

Or maybe not. Maybe he’d have to content with just knowing she was here, alive and healthy. He thought he could probably do that and not involve her in anything dangerous. 

Hopefully, the trouble-magnetism his other self possessed had stayed on the other side of the void, and nothing bad would happen to those in his vicinity.

Rose, though, would be severely disappointed if that were the case. He grinned and reached out for her hand, delighted when she grabbed it without hesitation and followed him out the door.


	5. Chapter 5

On the road to Rixington and the shopping-arcade he’d never heard of, Rose was strangely subdued. The weather had calmed down, so it wasn’t from concentration, and for a while he bounced the idea of just not enquiring about it back and forth. 

In the end, he decided to go for it anyway. “What’s bothering you?” It was probably nothing about this dream-case. She would talk about theories and solutions and ideas, just as much as he liked to do. So – maybe this was the _serious conversation_ she’d promised before?

She bit her lips and started to gnaw on her fingernail again, like she did when she was worried or sad. He took her hand and pulled it gently away from her teeth. 

Sighing, she lay it on the steering and then took another breath. “Did you… on that bridge, did you think about … jumping?”

Oh. Ooooh! How to answer? Honestly? Really honestly? Honestly enough that it was still true but not too revealing? 

He went with real honesty. “Yes. Of course. Thought about what it might feel like, hitting the water. And how drowning feels, and how long it would take.” He knew she was taking it the wrong way, but that was the point. “How long would I be able to hold out in the water, and if there would be damage from the fall and from hitting the surface. You know –“ he looked over, catching her sad eyes. “Technical stuff.”

She took a breath to talk, probably something … well, either something angry or something very sad. But both wasn’t necessary. “Not once did I think about actually _doing_ it, Rose. But I know what it feels like to fall, break something, nearly drown, get stabbed, get shot, get electrocuted. Get hurt, a lot. I know all that, from” he tapped his head “there. But I – this me – have never experienced any of that myself, and even though I remember the pain of it, this is a different body, with different physiological needs, functions and reactions. What was a minor thing for the Doctor would most likely kill me – permanently. If I ingest cyanide, I’ll die. No salt and shocking would detox that poison from me, and there’s only my lungs and one heart to keep me breathing and alive. I need to be a lot more careful with that than the Doctor had the luxury to be.”   
Not that it felt really luxurious to be stabbed, electrocuted, poisoned and shot. “And that’s really scary, Rose. I don’t _know_ all these things, because I remember differently. I know them on a basic, intellectual level, of course – how long can a human body endure without oxygen, how much force can a human bone take before it breaks, which are the most likely bones to break in a fall from a certain height, and which of these would be the most dangerous. But that’s intellectual, not instinct. My instincts… they’re still on Time Lord setting, Rose. If push came to shove, I might act even more suicidally mad than the Doctor did, but not because I actually _want_ to die! I swear,” and he took her hand and pressed it to his heart “I swear to you, Rose Tyler, that I don’t want to die at all. I love life, and I love being alive. There might come an occasion one day where that imperative is overwritten by something more important.” Like keeping someone else alive, or preventing a mass-extinction or similarly important things. “But I don’t feel the urge to end this existence on my own choice, with no outside influence.” 

She gripped his hand tighter until it hurt, and the tears in her eyes shone in the lights from the roadside-lanterns.

“Okay? Rose?” She nodded. “Good. Well… Since it seems we’re back into hunting for strange phenomena and unusual occurrences, I might need to test some variables in the upcoming future, and I might need your help. How much water do you think fits in our bath-tub, by the way? Completely unrelated!” He reassured, but the intended effect had already taken hold. Rose was grinning as she hit his thigh with her flat hand, and called him insufferable and stupid and dangerous to her health. 

He was pretty really sure that she got his message. 

Still, he wondered, how could he convince her to hold him under water until he knew how long he could last without air? Before, he might have just weighed himself down, but he had the suspicion that it wouldn’t be very well-received.

****

“We’re here,” Rose interrupted his thoughts. “That’s the front-entrance to the shopping-centre.” 

The windows were brightly-lit in golden, suggestive lights, enticing stragglers and passers-by to stay and linger on and long for the items in the display. Clothes, very expensive and not even that fancy, if he were asked. Shoes – very fancy and entirely unpractical. He missed the freedom of his feet and the feel of the street through the thin soles of his Converse, but he had to admit that his boots were warm and cosy and surely would provide him with enough support to run and maybe even climb, if necessary. 

The shoes in the window looked neither like trainers nor like boots, and had more in common with the weapons the Strgarian’s from Albula Prime used than anything that could possibly fit on a foot, human or otherwise. 

Rose dragged him away and towards the entrance, but he steered her further. “Never go in the front-door. Surprisingly, that’s the door that is most guarded. Which is stupid, because every thief worth his or her title would take the back-doors, employer-entrances or, if all else fails, the roof. The moments in history of the galaxy can be counted on one hand – well, a Griballian hand, not a human one. Well… maybe two human hands – where a thief entered through the front-door.”

“Very informative, Do… Doc. But can you actually open the side-entrance, or do we have to go over the roof?”

Slightly miffed that she suggested his sonic device wasn’t up for its purpose, he held it against the lock of the metal-door and it clicked open easily. Sadly, his smirk of superiority was completely lost on Rose, as she just walked by him without looking. Well, fine. He could always be amazing another time, when she was paying attention. 

Inside, the lights were low for the evening’s energy-saving-routine. Only a few lamps with the fantastic LED-technology that would take humans in the other universe quite some time still to make marketable were shining, illuminating just enough to ensure no nasty monsters or come-alive mannequins were lurking in the shadows. There were not enough shadows to lurk, and he suddenly got a sharp reminder of the Library and the Vashta Nerada. Maybe it was because he’d talked about it with Rose earlier, or it was a simple memory-trigger, but either way it stole his breath for a moment. 

Rose didn’t notice, and he was glad. “Maybe we should have taken chicken-legs,” he murmured, smiling wryly over Rose’s confused look. “Just… as a precaution.”

“Riiiiight,” she frowned. “I’ll just pretend this makes sense. You’d tell me if it’s something we actually need to do, right?”

Nodding, he gestured to their right, to a door that was marked ‘Shops’. It was locked, but not long, and they entered the shiny, eerily dark and utterly silent shopping-centre. Their footsteps, even with Rose’s trainers and his rubber-soled boots, echoed quiet but still audibly in the church-like atmosphere. And in a way, it could be likened to a temple, couldn’t it? Only the god they worshipped was the God of Consumerism, money and workforce its sacrifice. 

At this world, in this body, he was now praying along with everyone else, but there seemed to be no way around it. 

“As a little girl, I always dreamed about being locked in a shopping-mall at night,” Rose said quietly. “Thought it would be so brilliant, roaming around all alone, trying on everything with no concern as to who might look at me strangely. Eat every sweet ever until I couldn’t walk anymore, test-drive every toy ever made. Then I got my job at the shopping centre and it turned out to be completely boring to be the last one out at night.” She looked at him and smiled softly. “Well, until I met the Doctor, that is. Never been bored since.” Rose took his hand and swung it, as if they were a couple out on a romantic stroll.

He smirked. Romantic gestures were overrated anyway. They were nothing if they did not get interrupted by bouts of running for your life. “I always wanted to be locked into a library, as a child. Never could get enough of books,” he mused, thinking back to the libraries in Arcadia he’d visited in his youth. Well… not _his_ youth, but close enough. They’d never seemed to contain enough knowledge for him to achieve, always restrictive and bound into rules and regulations. 

“Really?” Rose looked at him with a pensive expression. “Yes, alright – I can totally see that. You totally seem like the nerdy boy who would bore everyone in listening-range with the exact size and shape of the newest discovered dinosaur.” 

“As I’ll have you know, dinosaurs are a fascinating subject. Everyone should know as much as possible about them, especially on Earth. Oh look, that looks like the travel-agency.”

. Deer and Hawthorne had a lovely display of exotic and generally enticing countries you could – supposedly – travel to, decorated with cute little zeppelins and some flowers and, for some reason, two cacti in the low-lit window.

Through the glass, in the background, they could see just about a couple of tables with uncomfortably-looking chairs and rows and rows of bright, colourful brochures in the shelves on the back-wall. It looked completely ordinary, and completely like any travel-agency looked in the other universe. 

Then again, he was hardly an expert, what with usually having his own means of travel. 

“Huh. I was expecting something a little… less boring,” Rose said next to him. She seemed as disappointed as he was, but then again, they’d only just started to investigate. 

“Let’s see what’s inside. Never judge a book by its cover, and never a show by its window-display.” With his screwdriver, the door was easily unlocked and the security-alert quickly disabled. “Better keep the lights off. The guard will probably come around at some point tonight, we don’t need to make his job even easier.”

“Yeah,” Rose agreed. “Let him work a bit before he catches us breaking in, you mean?” She grinned and there was the familiar flush of excitement on her face. Oh, she loved the thrill of mysteries just as much as he did, and he loved her all the more for it.

All of the Doctor’s companions had that desire to be thrilled, he thought while scanning the room with his sonic. All of them had it, the need for _more_, for change. Insane amounts of curiosity and all of them had a good heart. Well – except for a few misjudgements on his – well, the Doctor’s – part. But that’s par for the course of choosing a companion, you cannot make a perfect choice. And if you did, it hurt all the more when they inevitably left or had to be left behind. 

“Oh well, look at that,” Rose whispered from behind one of the desks. “It looks like Donna Mott is a secret kitten-lover.” She pointed to one of the drawers, where the owner of the desk – Donna, apparently – had stored twenty little cat-figurines in various positions. All of them were insanely cute and, sadly, didn’t scan for anything other than modelling clay and plasticine. 

“I don’t think that’s so much different from the other Donna,” he mused. “She didn’t have a cat, but she liked fluffy things quite a lot. Once, she brought a Varolian scout-cat-cub into the Tardis. Got it out just in the nick of time, but it had already half-eaten through the door of her room. She was devastated.” 

Rose smiled, then perked up as she remembered something. “Wait, aren’t those these ten-foot-tall monster-cats? How can you even fit that through the door? Not to mention, how would you even come to want one of those?” 

“Oh, they’re not bigger than an Earth-cat when they’re born. Grow up fast, the buggers.” Turning around once more with the screwdriver outstretched in his hand, he frowned. “This really doesn’t seem to be anything … special, or suspicious. Let’s look at the personnel-files.” 

Let it not be said that he couldn’t learn from past experiences, even if they weren’t his.


	6. Chapter 6

She hadn’t expected to stumble into a pot of gold, or a great big arrow pointing at something clearly marked as ‘clue’. Still, Rose thought, it would have been nice to find at least a hint. But there was nothing. Once he had explained to her about why he wanted to look at the sick-days, she’d had a bit of hope but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. In fact, the whole office was as ordinary as it could be and she wondered if, while they were here already, they could find some last-minute travel-opportunities. They hadn’t really left London at all since they’d been stranded here, except for the occasional Zep-trip to Wales.

Pete had offered Rose a job at Torchwood, and that had been her way to find the Doctor again, get back to the other universe. Once she’d done that and been left a second time, with the human Doctor-copy, she’d thought about actually working with him, doing something dazzling. At Torchwood.

Only… fantasies rarely turned into reality. And relationships can’t be just _gifted_, she’d come to realize. You had to want them, and then you had to work for them. They’d both been drifting along, mourning something they’d lost. In parts, they actually mourned the same things, but they had each carried their grieve alone. 

He refused to work for Torchwood directly, still certain they were dangerous and not entirely trustworthy. And she hadn’t wanted to work there without him – and she was frankly not qualified to work in engineering. So, to overcome the boredom and to get her arse into gear, she’d looked for a job, settling – to her own surprise – once more on selling clothes. It wasn’t dazzling, it wasn’t interesting, it wasn’t easy or paid very well. But she’d looked for something that could take her mind off the time with the Doctor, and boring, mind-numbing sales-work was just the thing. She didn’t have to think hard about it and yet it kept her occupied and out of her head. And Pete had enough money and was really keen on giving her whatever she needed, so pay had not been an issue. But it had also started to blurr her senses and numb her emotions.

On impulse, she now grabbed his hand and felt the reassuring pressure when he gripped it tightly. Nothing was lost, though, was it? It might not be as easy as the Doctor had made it sound – and he had probably imagined it being a lot easier. But the two of them could still work things out, they hadn’t burned any bridges between them. It was just a big bowl of misunderstanding and refusal to listen to each other. 

In the absence of heady, heart-jolting thrills, they’d both been too heavy and grounded to lift their minds and souls out of the mud. 

It would change now, Rose decided. They needed to find a way to be with each other even if there was no threat, no adventure and no new thrill. She would listen more, and she would make _him_ listen, too.

“Listen,” he whispered, and for a second she thought she’d spoken out loud. But he had his finger against his lip and was actively listening for something, and now, with concentration, she could hear it, too. 

Footsteps. 

And there was a glow, swinging around the dimly-lit shopping-arcade outside the window. 

“Down!” she hissed, pulling him to the floor with her and scrambling on her hands and knees behind the desks. They crammed under the table, pressed together like sardines in a can. Her pulse was racing wildly and she could feel his heartbeat underneath her arm, as close as they were. 

When the light suddenly lit up the room they were in, she held her breath. The door clicked open.

****

Stupid, stupid, stupid. He’d forgotten to re-lock the door after they’d broken in. The guard had rattled the door, found it unlocked and surly, now he’d get in to investigate. Any minute now, he would find them, point their torch at them and say…

“Goddammit, those stupid, vapid women. Always forget to lock their door. One of these days, let me tell ya, Monica. One of these days they’ll get the whole place ransacked. What was that?” There was a pause, and he realized that the watchman was speaking into his phone. He had one of these ear-thingies in, which surprised him immensely after what had happened with the cybermen. Then again… humans had a fascinating and frightening talent of forgetting and ignoring things that interfered with their convenience. “Naw, nothing valuable. If there’s ever a break-in, it would hardly be in the travel-agency, Monica. Don’t worry, nobody breaks in here. What was that? Oh – no, please tell me you’re joking. Darling, no…. nonono…” His voice trailed off and then there was a click and another one, and the footsteps retreated.

He felt Rose exhale, so close, so warm, so… right. She breathed once more, twice, then started to giggle and he couldn’t help but fall in with her. It had been a close call, but a minor one as that. Even if they’d been caught, nothing bad would have happened – well… probably nothing. One could never quite tell these days. She shifted, and he gasped.

“What?”

“Rose…” 

“Yes?” She was so close, if he wanted to, he would hardly have to move to kiss her. Her breath got a little faster, and was that maybe a blush on her cheekbones? 

“Rose… can you get your elbow out of my kidney, please?” 

She leaned back and moved. “Oh, sorry.” He missed her closeness at once, but since her elbow had now moved right into his liver – or maybe it was the spleen, he’d have to look that up – the need to get her even further away grew. Sad, but true. “Better?”

“No – ow. Come on, we got in here, that means we can get out without crushing vital organs. Ouch!” He turned towards her, astonished. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

“You’re such a baby,” she smirked and yes, that was definitely intentional, the way she put her weight on his shin. “Or are you saying I’m heavy?” 

Oh no. No no no, he would not step into _that_ trap! Oh no. “Of course not. Just clumsy. OW!” 

Giggling, Rose untangled herself from him and once every limb was back to where it belonged, they stood and brushed off their clothes. “Really,” Rose complained, taking off some kind of lintel from her jacket. “They could really clean a little more often. The carpet is disgusting.”

“We’ll let Donna know.” He scanned the lint, just in case. Nothing. Dammit. “Do you remember the names of the other people who had weird dreams?”

“Oh. Hm…” She thought. “Sherill, but that’s her co-worker. Who was the bloke…” Her fingernail tapped against her front-teeth. It was distracting. “Michael? Steve? William? One of these names, I’m sure. But I remember that he worked for Pence and Spencer. That’s the clothing-store.”

“Right. Let’s go find that. Maybe there’s something there.”


	7. Chapter 7

There wasn’t. Well – there were a lot of clothes, in all shapes and forms. And creepy mannequins, which Rose eyed wearily but which were, his sonic confirmed it, completely harmless. Creepy, but harmless. 

“There has to be something! I mean… can this be coincidence? Truly? Maybe the others have just dreamed normal dreams, maybe there is no connection.” Frustration gnawed at him and the ache behind his eyes that had started to develop somewhere around eight had now reached pounding proportions. He should have drunk more, he guessed, but that couldn’t be helped now. Well – maybe if they found a public water-fountain. But probably not in the clothing-store, that wouldn’t make sense. Then again, humans… 

Absently, he started to scan the room, first with his eyes and then with the screwdriver, on H2O-setting. 

Rose huffed, but was distracted by the rack of colourful blouses in front of them. “I don’t believe that. Do you?”

“I doubt it’s coincidence. It doesn’t make sense, but we probably need more data. Who is affected – is it just Donna and her circle of acquaintances? If so, that would make it highly likely it has to do with her directly. But maybe there are even more people involved, people we don’t know about. But how do we find out?” He ran his fingers through his hair and pulled a little, which didn’t help his headache at all. “Did you find a water-fountain here somewhere?”

“What?” Rose looked up. “A fountain?”

“I need something to drink,” was all he said, and clearly, that didn’t deserve the eyeroll he got? But still she took his hand and pulled him towards the check-out. And there was indeed a water-cooler, with little paper-cups even. “Oh. Here it is. How did you know? Are they always at the check-out?”

She raised her eyebrows and then looked up, and when he didn’t get what she meant, she took his chin and pushed his head up as well. Oh. Right. 

“Ah. They put a sign up. Very clever.”

“Isn’t it just,” she mocked. But the mocking was warm and sunny and made him feel right.

****

“You said we need more data. That means we’d have to talk to more people, right?” she later asked, on their way back home.

“Yes. I suppose we could … can we ask Donna to snoop around?” He didn’t think it was that outrageous to ask her, but he didn’t want to make her think they were mad.   
More than she already thought they were, that is. “I’m just not sure if that would be appropriate.” He sure would do it, and had done so on occasions. Well, the Doctor, not him personally, and the Doctor had the benefit of being from a different world and could just fly off when things got awkward. As Rose had pointed out earlier, _he_ couldn’t do that, and neither could Rose. They needed to live here – well, not necessarily here, but on Earth, at least – and it would probably require a status of ‘normal’. Being known for being madder than a box full of monkeys with fleas was, he supposed, a bloody brilliant way to just do what you wanted, but it didn’t lead to respect. If you were to shout that the world was in grave danger, for example, the mentally unstable where the last ones people believed.

Entirely unfair, since a lot of their madness usually came from knowing _too much_. The Doctor had always paid close mind to the ramblings of so-called nutters, and it had saved his arse a lot of times. 

Still, Rose was right – they needed the low-profile of ‘normal’. Maybe, to spice things up a bit, they could be ‘odd’. “Oh, did I ever tell you about the Ood, by the way?” 

Rose turned sharply and then focused back on the road. “What? You met them again? Tell me!”

And so he did. He told her about the Ood Sphere, about their song and about how Donna had been so brilliant. There was that by-now-familiar stinging sensation of tears developing behind his eyes, but he managed to keep them in. Just his voice got a little croaky, and he supposed that it wasn’t actually that dissimilar to being a Time Lord. 

He could remember his – the Doctor’s – voice sounding quite the same at one or two occasions. Well – maybe three. Four at the most. Well…. Occasionally.

“I’m glad they were freed. You know,” Rose spoke silently, very deliberately not looking at him. “I sometimes wonder how much of this world is the same. I mean, the people we met are so similar here! Pete’s… he’s like my dad was, and his Jackie was close enough to my mom for him to fall back in love with her. And Rickey had the same grandma Mickey had…” Her voice sounded so lost for a moment, but she accepted his touch with a grateful smile. “So… how much of time and space is the same? Will we develop into the same human empire you… the Doctor showed me? New New New New New New York and all? Or … will we burn out in some kind of intergalactic war, with … I don’t know, the Sycorax?”

“Hmm. If it were the Sycorax, they’d probably just conquer Earth and keep you as slaves. Not much into battling with equal opponents, the Sycorax. But I know what you mean,” he hurried to interrupt himself before he could go off on a tangent again. “Wish I could tell you. Strange. I can’t say anything, and that is probably quite normal, me being human and all, but it’s really … _weird_ that I can’t tell. I remember that I used to. Now I can’t.” It ached, maybe similar to phantom-pain people experienced after losing a limb. But it wasn’t a physical pain, nothing he could put into words. No ‘it hurts in my frontal lobe’ or ‘it’s like toothache’. It was nothing of that sort, since it was located in a place that humans simply didn’t _have_ and therefor couldn’t grasp. The fact that he could was strange enough – he didn’t have that place inside his body anymore, either. Maybe it was like having a spleen, being aware of it, and suddenly not having it anymore? But since the Doctor had always had that…that… well, time-spleen, and he never had it as a human, he could remember having it and having it _not_ at the same time. It made his head spin, just thinking about it. How could he explain that to Rose? Her brief experience with the time vortex had been completely erased from her mind, thank the skies, but that also meant that she really, truly couldn’t understand him in that regard.

“Is that... does it scare you?” She asked, carefully. Because she would, because it was Rose, because she might not understand his problems, but she would and could sympathise with any effects from it.

No, he thought. Apart from that ache, which he only noticed when he concentrated on it, the concept of not knowing wasn’t actually frightening. “You know…” he realized on closer inspection of his emotions, “I actually find it fascinating. And really … thrilling.” He grinned at her and she beamed back, and then they were back at their house and parked the car and she pulled him along, not letting go until they’d reached the bedroom.


	8. Chapter 8

“You know what?” Rose whispered into the darkness, pressing the words right into his back, into the cloth of his pyjama-shirt. It smelled like him and like cotton and like the washing-detergent they used. Nice. Perfect. Incredibly comforting.

“I know quite a lot. What do you mean specifically?” 

She giggled and poked him in the side. It amazed her that someone who had to be as sleepy as herself could actually form coherent sentences like he did, using words like ‘specifically’. 

“I have an idea how we could get more data for the Donna-mystery.”

Instantly, he was awake and turned on his back, then sat up and moved to the head of the bed to lean against. Grumpy, she moved with him but didn’t sit, instead clamped herself over his belly to have a little more warmth and sleep-smell to keep her happy. 

“How? Rose? Rose! Aw, come on, don’t fall asleep, that’s… Rose?” He poked her until she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Ouch, stop it. Fine.” She sat up and had to grin, seeing his even-worse-than-usual hair stick up and all over his head. God, she loved his bed-hair. 

“Rose!”

“Oh, use your own head.” He still stared at her, accusingly. “We can ask Pete to have his people investigate.” It wasn’t that much of a novel idea, Rose thought. After all, Pete was more or less the head of Torchwood – this world’s Torchwood – and this was close enough to what they were actually _for_. 

She hadn’t wanted to bring it up, really, since she knew he was weary of Torchwood’s intentions and purpose. But last night before they’d fallen asleep, he’d thrown out wild and crazy ideas, most of them involving psychic paper – he’d nicked it from the Tardis, he’d said, there had been a spare set probably never to be missed – or crazy, elaborate and complicated science-thingies he’d have to build. 

While that was amusing, it was still not a good solution to the rather small-scale problem. So right before falling asleep against him, she’d remembered that she had a mother and a sort-of-father who were actually capable of helping. 

“Oh. Right. Well… that’s… Huh.” 

“You never thought about it, did you?” She glanced upwards and into his slightly embarrassed face. Really… he was such a dork sometimes. Affectionately, she patted his thigh. “That’s alright. You be bloody brilliant and I’ll keep your head on your shoulders, mate.” 

Softly, he stroked her hair away from her eyes and behind her ears. It was starting to show the roots again, but she hadn’t had the time or interest in re-dying it yet. Maybe she’d grow out the blond. “You do so much more than that, Rose.” And the bloody idiot had to smile that soft smile that made her heart skip a beat and go all topsy-turvy again. 

But like quicksilver, his gaze drifted away from the softness and into calculation-mode, a bit distant and unreachable. Even he, as a human, was very hard to keep up with. Rose was aware that he didn’t expect her to, just like the Doctor hadn’t ever expected. He – both of them, apparently – were used to being lightyears ahead of others, but even though his ego was certainly huge, the Doctor wasn’t _really_ arrogant. He never lorded any superior knowledge above others, except of course when he did so on purpose. Or if he felt like it. 

Yeah, okay, sometimes he was a big twat. Well – at least the Doctor was. Rose wasn’t sure if being ‘just’ human had translated in having the same self-assuredness. Well, she was bound to find out in their time together, wasn’t she? Because no way was she leaving this loveable, clever, dorky, sometimes extremely _dim_ human alone in this world. 

“I think it could work. We might as well ask Pete and Torchwood if they had anything to do with it in the first place, while we’re at it.”

Rose sighed. He was right – they might as well.

****

After work, he invited Rose and himself over to Pete and Jackie’s house for tea. Jackie, for some odd reason, had decided to _like_ him even though he’d accidentally abducted Rose for over a year once. Well – and more than that, but at least that had been with her knowledge. She didn’t appreciate him – the Doctor – putting her in danger, but she’d proved to be a capable if oftentimes irritating ally. With _him_, she’d been surprisingly motherly and had reminded him – not that he’d _ever_ say so out loud – of Donna Noble in her ability to kick him into gear.

Maybe that’s why he’d avoided the household as much as he could. She made him uncomfortable with the … slouch he’d fallen into, but he hadn’t found the strength or even interest in changing it. Now, he was glad to see her, even though with her bathrobe and the towel-turban over her hair she looked fantastically ridiculous. 

“What the hell are you two doing here? Can’t you use a phone like anyone else can? I know _you_ can, Rose, so don’t give me that look, miss! I look like a scarecrow!” 

“Naw, you look splendid! Also, scarecrows are way less vocal, so you’re good. Ow, what was that for?” 

Rose, having boxed him on the arm, shoved him aside and sing-songed “Ru-uude.” What? He _had_ said Jackie looked splendid, hadn’t he? 

“Sorry,” he said anyway, because he’d learned that Rose was – in most cases – right about such things. 

“Oh, I know how you are, don’t I? Never expected curtesy from you – that would be bloody weird.” Jackie perked up when there was a sound from the kitchen-counter, a baby-phone had started yelling for ‘Mommy!’. “Oh no – let’s see what he wants now. Go, make yourself a cuppa, I’ll be right back.”

Pete emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered and clean-shaven and with a startled look that quickly turned into embarrassment. Oh … now _that_ look, he knew too well. He dared a quick look at Rose, who was first puzzled, then blushed fiercely and tried to avoid Pete’s gaze completely. Oh yeah… This was now officially fun. 

Grinning, he bumped her shoulder with his elbow, trying to catch her eyes. She refused and when she couldn’t avoid it, glared at him with all the force she could muster. “What?” He tried to look innocent and probably failed spectacularly. “Where did you think little Tony came from?” 

“Shut up!” she hissed and stormed off into the kitchen, past her puzzled mother and a smirking Pete. Oh yeah. Sometimes, domesticity _could_ be fun.

****

“So, Doc. What brings you here? Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but it seems the same can’t be said for you.”

They had eaten – bread and cheese and cucumbers and that strange little blue tomato-thing that had apparently developed in this world and not the other – and now Pete wanted answers. 

Ignoring his rebuke – it might be deserved, but not entirely true; he _did_ enjoy Pete’s company a lot, it was just that he wasn’t particularly fond of his own – he pulled out the notes he and Rose had created during their so-far-resultless investigation. Having to carry a bag around to transport things was one more thing that reminded him of being something different from the Doctor, but even though he wasn’t a true Time Lord, he might just have a go trying his hands on transdimensional pockets. “We…” he started, but was interrupted by Rose. 

“He met Donna. Remember her?” Pete nodded. “Donna of this world, of course. She doesn’t remember him – “ 

“Of course not,” Jackie interjected, “she never met him, right?”

“No, I don’t think she did. But she dreamed about him.” 

There was silence in the kitchen, then – of course – Jackie babbled “What, what kind of dreams?” 

“Not those, Jackie. Well… No. No, not those. Just… dreams, which, it turns out, are not _dreams_.”

Pete frowned. “You mean she dreams of things that really happened?” 

“No – she dreams of things that _will_ happen, or at least are happening right then and there. Not quite sure about the timing yet.” 

“Yes. And that’s weird, right? Mom, Pete, you see how that’s weird, don’t you?”

“I would say,” Jackie muttered, “but if you ask me, the fact that she has dreams about him is strange on its own.”

“Exactly!” Ah, sometimes Jackie could be brilliant. Mind – not as often as Rose, or Donna, or Martha. But she had her moments of clarity. “It’s… it’s such a big coincidence! How come she dreams of _me_, of all the people in this city? What’s the connection? There has to be some…”

“Also,” Rose interrupted his rambling thoughts, “there are at least two other people who dream of strangers. Not him,” she held up her hand when Jackie wanted to speak. “But others. Complete strangers, it appears. So… what we’re here for is a … well. A request.” She looked at him. 

What?

Oh! She was giving him his cue! 

“Ah, yes. Well… We thought – well, Rose thought and I think it’s a good idea, brilliant in fact, that you, Pete, might help us ask around at the arcade – did we mention she works in a travel-agency? We had a look around last night but couldn’t find anything, nothing at all that seems strange, not even strange and unusual sick-days…” he petered off when he noticed there amused and bemused faces. “Oh, yes. We’d – as in, Rose and I – would be … grateful if you might… ask around?”

“Let me get this straight.” Pete leaned back a little, putting distance between the two of them. “You, Doc, want me to ask one of our Torchwood-teams to investigate. Is that about right?”

Carefully, he nodded. That was right, wasn’t it? 

“You don’t trust us at all, and still you want that?”

“Oh, I still don…” he stopped himself, gathered his thoughts and his words. Started new. “I am … cautious. Still. But I trust _you_, so by extension, I might be inclined to give your people the benefit of the doubt.”

Pete blinked, clearly taken aback at his words. Were they _that_ unusual? Rose, though, was beaming at him so he hadn’t been rude, which was a good start. 

“Oh, I’ll go see if Tony’s sleeping yet,” Jackie spoke, and as she left the kitchen, she patted his shoulder on the way out. “He’s being under the weather and comes into the bedroom every hour or so to get something to drink or a story or… He’s quite like Rose was, at that age.”

“He’s not! I was never like that!” Rose protested, but in this case, he was actually inclined to believe Jackie.

“Wow.” Pete rubbed his chin. “I’d never thought I’ll ever hear you say that.” It startled him. Surely, he hadn’t been that rude and abrasive, had he? Mentally, he went through all the conversations he’d had with Peter Tyler, and even those the Doctor had had. Nothing came up as incredibly insensitive, even if he looked at his words twice or three times. Sometimes, humans were so infuriatingly difficult to understand. 

Was he supposed to say something now?

“So”, thankfully, Rose helped him out there. “Will you help? It’s not even that far off what you already do. It’s strange, it’s bound to be something… extra-terrestrial, right?” She blinked her eyes at Peter, who in return narrowed his own. 

“Oh, I see right through you, Missy. Don’t think I can live with your mother and not be aware of your eye-magic!”

She smiled, and he’d say it was coy – except, maybe there was something wrong with his perception of humans, and he wasn’t quite sure. But if forced to, he’d say it was coy. 

“Really? But… is it working?”

At that, Pete laughed out loud. “Oh, bloody hell. You really are your mother’s daughter, no doubt about that. Okay. I’ll see what I can do. But … what exactly is it you want?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the mix-up in the last chapter. It seems I skipped over one, so anyone reading might have been mightily confused. Sorry! Hope it's fixed now, if not please let me know.

Rose let the Do… let him explain. While he was gesturing wildly and trying to argue Pete into promising a small-scale investigation that would under no circumstance end in deeper involvement of Torchwood into the matter, she slipped out of the room and went to see her mom. 

She was sitting on the couch, Tiny Tony against her side. Her brother was fast asleep and blowing bubbles with his spit. He looked cute, but also a little bit disgusting. “Hey, sweetheart. Didn’t think you would drag yourself away from those two.” 

Sighing, Rose dropped next to her and leaned her head against her shoulder. “I feel like I’ve just been through a mangle, Mom. He’s … It feels so familiar, and that makes me happy, but I’m not sure if that’s fair. He’s not the Doctor, you know?”

“Aw, Rose. Of course I know. Did you figure that one out just now?” 

Rose huffed. “No, no. Of course not. Well… maybe I was … I don’t know.” Her hand once more strayed towards her teeth.

Jackie stood and gathered Tony lie on the other couch with a blanket and pillow and went back to give her a thorough, perfect Mom-squeeze. “Rose, sweetheart. These last… ugh, months, I’ll say, you’ve been moody and broody and dragging your arse through life. I’m not complaining, you’ve been through a lot.”

“We all have, Mom,” she whispered, burying her nose into her scent. To imagine she’d nearly had her turned into a cyberman not that long ago… Rose shuddered at the memory.

“Yes, yes we have. But Rose… remember when I said I’m afraid one day, you’ll come back to the world and be someone completely different, not Rose Tyler anymore?” Rose nodded. “Well. That happened.” Jackie held her when she wanted to shift away, quite firmly. “You came back someone different. You were… not Rose Tyler from the Estate with no degree and a job in a clothing-shop. I bloody love you, whatever it is you do – you know that, right?” At her nod, Jackie continued. “And I was so scared that you turn into someone who would… you know, who I wouldn’t understand anymore. But that was bollocks. I’m your mother, and you’re my daughter, and even when I don’t understand half of what you said whenever you returned, what I did understand was that you were happy. You were so happy, Rose!” 

Both of them were sniffing a little, both pretending that they weren’t. “And then all this awful cyberstuff happened and I met Pete and you lost your Doctor, and then you … suddenly you were not happy anymore. You were basically back to where you started, a girl from the Estate, nothing special, no adventures, just selling clothes. It was breaking my heart, it was. And so when the Doctor put this weird twin on that beach I thought ‘wow, she has her second chance now’, like I had with Pete. And I wanted to slap the two of you because instead of being happy again, both of you walked around like someone had given you lemons instead of oranges. Or like they put salt on your strawberries.” Rose chuckled a bit and felt her mother smile. “But now. Now you’re glowing again, Rose. Oh, I’m sure it’s some completely daft idea you two are cooking up – well, three, since Pete seems to be involved and let me tell you, that man is just as mad as your father! – and in a few days I will curse the ground he walks on because I just know he’ll bring you into danger. But seeing you happy again?” Jackie took her by the shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “Seeing you happy makes me happy, Rose. Don’t throw your second chance away just because he’s not the exact same person your Doctor was. Pete isn’t your father, but that doesn’t mean I love him any less, and Tony is not you. But I still love both of you, and will forever and ever. You hear me?”

Now, there was no hiding the tears anymore, and Rose sobbed into her mother’s arms, let herself be rocked gently, just like she’d been rocked as a child when someone had been mean to her. “He doesn’t even have a name,” she heard herself whisper, to which Jackie giggled. 

“Don’t be daft. Of course he has. You just need to find out what it is.”

Sometimes, Rose thought while wiping her face dry, her mom was really super smart.

****

When she joined the two men in the kitchen, it seemed they had come to an arrangement. Pete was glaring and he was looking smug, so it was a safe bet as to who had come out on top. 

“The moment something seems really dangerous,” Pete tried to assert some control, “the same moment, Torchwood will take the reins. We never know what this might be.”

“Exactly, Peter. It might not be anything at all, so why assume the worst?” 

“You clearly are, so-“ 

Rose had heard enough. “No, we don’t, actually. We just need more than two people and some measure of authority behind us to ask some simple, genuinely harmless questions. Nothing sinister at all!” 

Pete glared, but it was all for show. They’d won, and Rose slapped her boyfriend on the shoulder. “C’mon, you. We’ll go have a chat with Donna tomorrow, explain to her why suddenly strange people might ask weird questions.” 

“Oh yes! Let’s. Go home, that is. Thank you so much for tea, Jackie,” he spoke loud enough for her mom to hear, which was sadly also loud enough to wake Tony. 

“Oh God, please no - _hush-uh-by Tony, hush-and-sleep well…_ \- get out of my house, you monster!” 

Now, well-meaning people might think it had been an accident. It was, after all, quite some time since the Doctor had been around young children, and technically this one didn’t have _any_ experience at all. But the big, beaming grin he sported when he slipped out the door really spoiled any doubt, and Rose gave him a glare, a slap, and then a loud laugh while they rushed down the stairs. “You’re impossible!”

“What?” he honest-to-god giggled. “They wanted that little bundle of joy, didn’t they? I’m just trying to help them appreciate the quiet moments even more.”


	10. Chapter 10

The next day, the two of them went to the arcade to speak to Donna in person. They saw her through the window, talking to a client who looked impatient and quite rude. Looking at Rose, he tried to ask her opinion about just barging in and shoving the annoying stranger out with a raised eyebrow, but she seemed distracted. 

He turned his head to see what had her attention. Across the mall’s hallway, a young man was talking to a young woman who looked a little bit uncomfortable but soon gave a tentative smile and finally nodded, then followed the young man towards a coffee-point. “What is it?” he asked, because it hadn’t seemed noteworthy at all.

“I don’t know,” Rose said. “I just… It’s nothing. Thought I saw someone. But…” she stopped, frowned and then turned around to smile at him. “Hm, maybe from work. I see an awful lot of people all day.”

“Right, so – let’s go have a chat with Don- ow!” 

“Watch where you’re going, Mister,” the client from the travel-agency had stepped right into their path and on his toes, then brushed them away and hurried along. How rude! 

“Oi, what are you two doing here? Bet you don’t want to book a flight to Israel, do you?” 

Israel… had the Doctor ever been to Israel? Apart from that one very early time… oh. Right – yes. Well... Better not, then. “Uh, we… maybe another time.”

“Oh, fine. I’ll just have my lunch-break now, then. Sherill!” Donna barked into the office, “I’m off to lunch, see you at two!” Then she grabbed his sleeve – why did people always grab _his_ sleeve? Why never Rose’s? – and hurried them along towards one of the cafés. 

“Now, what have you found out? And don’t tell me you haven’t, because this is getting to get on my nerves, the whole,” Donna gestured some gestures that might make sense to her, but only her “You know. Dream-business.”

“Sorry,” Rose started, but he interrupted. 

“Wait, did you have _another_ dream of me? Still just me?” Because he and Rose had been together most of the day, it would be strangely specific to get that one or two moments they hadn’t been. 

“Oh – yes. Last night, dreamed about you fiddling something. _Again_,” she growled, as if it were somehow dirty or indecent to be fiddling. Well… probably depended on what you were fiddling with, he supposed. “Something technical, with lots and lots of numbers. I’m good with numbers, but not good enough with equations. That, or you are completely bonkers and are just making this stuff up.”

He thought a bit. Numbers? Oh, right! “Oh – that must have been at work. I…” What did he tell her? “I’m an engineer.” Should do nicely, people tended to not really care beyond the basics when it came to engineering. 

That seemed to be true for Donna as well, as she nodded and bit into her sandwich. 

“Anyway, no – we didn’t find out much, sorry. But we… uh, that is, my father works for the… government and there’ll be people asking questions all day, so we just thought we’d warn you – they might come by your office and ask about dreams. And … things.” Rose looked a little shifty at the broad explanation, but even without that, he thought Donna wouldn’t have bought it. Her eyes had narrowed and she was once more giving her ‘you’re not shitting me, Missy’-look. 

This Donna was painfully close to the other universe’s Donna, and he was feeling ever more and in equal amounts happiness and dread the more they got to know her. 

“Right, Blondie. Try that again, but cut the bullshit, all right? I’m not some dumb plonker you can just babble hogwash at! Now, start speaking sense or I’ll…” she faltered. What a shame, she’d really been going well there so far. “I’ll call the police.” Donna crossed her arms over her chest, trying to look threatening and satisfied at once. 

No matter that her threat wasn’t that impressive, especially not considering she was still sitting here with the two people she had been calling out on their hogwash, she did look impressive. And oh heavens, did he want to hug her. 

It would probably not go over too well, though, so he refrained. Judging from her puzzled and slightly alarmed look, though, something must have shown on his face. Rose, too, was smirking at him and she leaned back and raised her eyebrows. “Fine,” she said, smug. “I’ve tried, now go on, tell her what’s happening, then.”

And because really, why play a game here with some elaborate lies and subterfuge. The truth was just as unbelievable but he wanted this Donna to trust them, and … well, to be perfectly honest, he wanted a Donna in his life. Preferably this one. And lying to her wouldn’t accomplish much at all. Sighing, he scratched his head and calculated the odds how she’d receive the truth. 

Then, he dismissed all the calculations and jumped right in.

****

Rose had never met Donna Noble. Well – technically, she had, of course. But apart from _knowing_ she was the Doctor’s companion and knowing what she meant to him, she hadn’t really had much interaction with her. Basically, she’d seemed like a no-nonsense kind of woman with quite a big mouth – and a lot of bite in her bark, and had in no way been romantically interested in him.

Which had, in all honesty, been a big factor in her favour, for Rose. 

Now, this wasn’t Donna Noble, but the moment he’d taken a deep breath and wiped any kind of falseness off his face, Rose had seen that he really, _desperately_ wanted her to be close enough. Wanted her close because she _was_ enough. 

She held her breath when he started talking, started at the beginning – their beginning, the _Doctor-and-Rose_ beginning. And she kept holding her breath while he talked about traveling with her, about losing her to this world, about cybermen and aliens and Queen Victoria and werewolves. 

It was pretty much like all his stories – a mad jumble of words and tangents and history and reality and possibilities. It was – well, it was exactly like travelling with the Doctor had been. And then he continued into meeting this ‘fantastic woman’, who’d kicked his arse when he needed to, kept him on his toes and glared him into decency when he strayed. Well, when the Doctor strayed. 

He didn’t tell her every little bit. He didn’t even go into _too_ much detail, it was more a broad summary of his time with Donna Noble and Rose Tyler. It was more than enough for _her_, because she could fill the blanks with enough experiences to make them into true adventures, but she feared that it was too much for someone who’d not only never heard about something like that, but who would never be able to verify the tales. 

Rose nearly choked when she realized that there was _no way_ for them to prove all this. For Donna Mott, this must seem like complete horseshit, like a … a science fiction story made up for her entertainment. 

This couldn’t end well, she thought, observing the disbelieve on Donna’s face. This will end in Donna walking off and demanding them to stay away, and her heart skipped a little when she glanced back towards him and realized that he was very well aware. 

Funny. The Doctor would be puzzled and surprised that anyone wouldn’t believe him. But then, she thought a little bitterly, he’d always had the ability to _prove_. What could a human with no Tardis and no extraordinary features do to make someone believe this incredible tale? 

Even if the mannequins in the arcade would start walking, it still wouldn’t prove _aliens and time-travel_. 

“Stop.” Donna spoke quietly, but he instantly stopped talking. “Are … you’re not actually thinking I’ll believe a word of that… that ridiculous story you’re spinning, are you?” 

He took a deep breath and then shook his head. “Not really, no.”

“But… why tell me this, then, when you know that I won’t believe you?”

“Because you wanted to hear the truth and I didn’t want to lie to you.” 

“So… you’re still saying all this… all this aliens and stuff is real?”

He nodded. When Donna glanced at Rose, she did so as well. 

“Really? You, too, Rose? If that’s even your name! No-“ she held up her hand when Rose wanted to assure her about that, at least, “no, I don’t want to hear it. Not… This is completely ridiculous! Even the story with the government-dad is less unbelievable! I… I can’t even…” 

Donna was pale and there were tears in her eyes. Apparently, meeting him and her had meant something to her as well, and it was hurting her to think they were just completely nuts. Rose felt tears prick her eye, too. More for his sake, for the utter misery she saw in his eyes than for her own. But still, Donna Mott had grown on her and she felt a rip in her heart when she thought about never seeing her again. 

He was completely silent. No begging, not trying to convince her. Nothing, he just sat there, quiet and obviously miserable. When Donna stood to go back to her work, saying she would prefer not to see them again, he just nodded. 

As Donna turned a corner, walking brusquely but with her head hanging and her shoulders pulled high, Rose went over to him and hugged him, hard. He grabbed her and held her and breathed into her shirt, as he loved to do, and she pretended not to notice that it was slowly turning damp where his tears touched the fabric. 

After a while, he took a deep breath and extracted himself from her. 

“Why didn’t you just tell her a better story?” Rose asked, and he stared at the ceiling for a moment before turning his face to her. He still looked miserable, but resolved. 

“She deserves the true story. It’s… well, it was a gamble. If she believed the truth… But if she believed the lie, and we’d become friends – you realize that I want us to be friends, right? That it feels right for me to be her friend?” She nodded silently and smiled. “Well, if we were to become friends based on some story about … I don’t know, secret government agencies hunting ghosts, or some nonsense like that, and if we _ever_ were to get drawn into – well, more like jump in with both feet, knowing us,” he threw her a smile, still a bit wobbly but big and honest. “Anyway, if we were back in old patterns, and she’d be drawn in as well… well, in that case, we’d have to tell her the truth _then_ and have her realize that we’d been lying to her all the time. I’d rather chase her away now than hurt her later.”

A brittle laugh escaped Rose then, and she had to hug him again. “You’re really impossible, you know that? And I think you’re fantastic. And I think you did the right thing, and maybe – we can always hope, right? She might change her mind.”

He nodded. “Sure. The other Donna changed her mind as well. Did I tell you? I asked her to be my comp…. damn” he grabbed his hair in frustration. “_The Doctor_ asked her to be _his_ companion after meeting her the first time. That was right after he had to leave you on that beach. She refused.” He chuckled, a little wistfully. “And that was very smart of her. The Doctor had not been in a good place there. But she changed her mind and later, when they met, she’d,” he smirked “Rose, you should have seen her. She’d had the whole car full of luggage, just in case she’d meet the Doctor again. Three – no, four suitcases _and_ a hatbox!” 

Rose snorted at the imagery. “At least she knew what she was getting herself into, right?” 

“That, she did. Well… as much as anyone can know what they get themselves into in a Tardis, right?” He winked at her and she grinned in delight. She loved his face when it was boyish and happy, full of delight about the weirdest things. Sometimes, he looked like that when he found a new, interesting dish – he’d looked like that when he’d first put nutmeg on his oats, for example – or when he saw something that was different from the other universe, something Pete’s-World-unique. And sometimes, he looked at _her_ like that, a little unbelieving and a little hopeful and a lot fond. At least fond, if not more. 

“We’ll get her, you know? I don’t know how, and I don’t know if we can ever convince her, but no matter, somehow, one day, she’ll be sitting with us at home, and we’ll have the most fantastic time _ever_.”

“She’s not a puppy we can buy,” he cautioned her, but Rose didn’t want to hear it.

“I know. It’s not like that. I just _know_ we will. Just you wait.”

While she paid – he still didn’t quite get money as a concept, and would give way too much tips to be allowed to – Rose noticed a couple on the seats in the corner. They looked very lovely. His hands were moving and she was giggling, and she felt a smile break out at their courtship. She’d seen them before, across the travel-agency, and apparently the awkward, dorky-looking boy’s move on the stunning woman had worked well. 

She wished them the best. If people so jarringly different – she was gorgeous, and her clothes spoke of taste as well as class while he looked… definitely below her league – could fall in love and be happy, she and her Doctor-twin could find happiness as well. Rose would make certain of that.


	11. Chapter 11

Of course it was bloody hard to let Donna walk away, thinking he and Rose were completely bonkers. But there were no two ways about it, and even though he regretted the outcome, he didn’t regret telling her the facts.

While Rose paid – she didn’t seem to believe he knew what money was for, the way she acted sometimes – he observed the Torchwood-team work their magic.

They were quite good. The setup was a fake medical survey about sleeping-patterns, the spin that they were researching for a better sleeping-pill. If he hadn’t seen Pete talk to the group’s leader earlier, he’d easily believe them to be real. 

The shoppers were kindly stopped and asked about inane things, like their personal help to get to sleep, their sleeping-habits, temperature of the room, and strewn in there, questions about dreams. Nightmares, good dreams, erotic dreams and recurring characters in their dreams.

Smart.

No, genius, in fact. 

He smirked. They were his questions, he’d suggested them to Pete and he, in turn, had taken his advice and advised his people. But apart from his brilliant idea on what excuse to use, Torchwood was pretty good with the subterfuge and acting. They didn’t seem out of place in this surrounding, the shoppers seemed interested and were always treated kindly and with respect. 

A little scary, considering what Torchwood was actually _for_. Its sole purpose was catching him – no, catching the Doctor. And even though this was a different dimension, and _he_ wasn’t the Doctor, and _this_ Torchwood hadn’t actually heard of the Doctor, it still felt a little disturbing to see them be good at their job. 

Well, at least good at this job. Who knew what they were failing at when it came to handling alien artefacts or treating prisoners from distant worlds. Some of the artefacts had been shown to him, now and again. At least in the beginning of his work with Pete Tyler. Lately, since he’d stopped even pretending to show interest, nothing had been put on his metaphorical desk anymore. 

He couldn’t even say he missed it. Alien artefacts were a connection to the old, the _true_ him. To the Doctor, to the Tardis and to being something he wasn’t anymore, had never been. And looking at them, identifying them, had hurt in quite unexpected ways. Whenever he’d recognized something, he’d realized he’d never see something like it again in its original context, and whenever he hadn’t known what he was looking at, he’d understood that he’d never know, no matter how much he wanted to.

And skies, how he wanted to.

So it wasn’t lack of interest. It was too much interest, and a big lot of self-preservation that had him refuse to help Pete and, by default, Torchwood.

Maybe he’d try again.

Or maybe not, he wasn’t sure. Everything around him was wobbly, and he felt in quick succession like an old man who was close to dying – relatively speaking, coming from the life-expectancy of Time Lords, that was true – and a baby who didn’t even understand the most basic things. Which was also true.

Take sleeping. 

He’d been astonished to learn that he actually _needed_ at least seven hours of sleep. He’d refused to believe it at first, until he’d been shaky, both hungry and sick at the same time, unbearably grumpy and whiney and, to top it off, unable to concentrate on anything. He’d thought he had caught a stupid disease, and been mortified when it was pointed out that sleeping less than four hours every day for over a week was what amounted to sleep-deprivation. 

And that he’d simply been bone-tired. Not dying. 

Well. Rose had had a good laugh about that, so that was good, right? 

That was the thing with being human suddenly. The complete… well, alien-ness. He thought he knew what it was like, being human, but the time as John Smith had been different in so many ways. He’d been human, with no memory of being a Time Lord. As he’d changed back, the Doctor remembered being human, but since there had been no effort in _being_ human, as John Smith had never been anything else, the Doctor hadn’t retained basic needs as efforts worth making. 

Sadly, for him, now, that proved to be a problem. When do you eat? And how much of it? Are there any allergies? – here, he’d been very lucky, since the new add-ons to his DNA had overwritten the aspirin-allergy and he could take something for headaches, thank the skies! And nothing else so far had proved problematic. But while fascinating, testing for bee-allergy in the field – literally in a field – was not exactly fun.

Other mysteries included his new sense of smell – so limited, so _different_ \- and hinging on that, tastes. Licking things nowadays, it turned out, was really revolting. In many cases.

Eating pears was still disgusting, and bananas were still very nice. Bread was alright, but rice nowadays tasted heavenly and there truly could not be enough curry in his curry, but there now was a limit to chili, and it was astonishingly low. Coffee tasted different, but not bad. Milk was strange as well, but luckily it was much better than the Doctor had found it to be. 

Alcohol made him drunk in minutes – he would be a cheap date, Rose had said when they’d gone out to test that little difference – and chamomile tea might be his new absolute favourite drink in the world. 

He tried to keep that one between him and Rose, since he’d been looked at very strangely whenever he’d mentioned it. Like at work, for example. It would seem that chamomile wasn’t exactly ‘hip’. 

All these little mysteries had been interesting, but also … well, frightening. ‘You are not the Doctor’, they told him over and over again, but only recently… like, really, _really_ recently had it changed from being scary to being fascinating. 

“Come on, let’s go,” Rose interrupted his thoughts and he smiled up to her. 

“I really wish I could ask a few of those questions myself,” he mused as they walked back into the arcade’s hall and Rose furrowed her brows. 

“Why not? We just need two of those badges, which incidentally seem to have slipped into my pocket this morning.” Grinning, she held up two name-tags with the correct institute’s name and a blank space to fill in with their – fake – names. 

“Aww, I could kiss you!” he exclaimed, remembered that actually, he _could_ and did so. She seemed to like it, and he pressed her a little bit closer before turning around to find a place to put the tags on. “Do you think we need a disguise as well? Should we have one of those lab-coats?” He really liked the lab-coats. They looked very official. 

“I think we’re good as we are. But maybe take off your jacket, your shirt looks more corporate than the parka.” 

They found the bathrooms and went to straighten themselves a little, then turned into one of the side-floors away from Torchwood’s finest to do their own fake survey.


	12. Chapter 12

Groaning, he took off his boots. His feet had never been that tired in the Converse, he thought, wriggling his toes. They’d been surveying all day, and their efforts had turned up results. Pete wasn’t due to give them any information before tomorrow, but with what they had, they could at least start. 

“Okay, I got a floor-plan here,” Rose spoke and dropped a sheet of paper on the table, fresh from the printer. It showed the layout of the arcade, but it was only DIN A4, and too small for what he had in mind. 

“Can you give me a pen?” he asked, already planning on how to make this whole thing big enough for his purpose. 

“I could, but I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to take a shower now, so find the pen yourself. You know where they are.” He looked up, surprised at her testiness. Had he done something wrong? 

Sighing, Rose rubbed her hands over her hair. She did look tired, he assumed, and gave her a smile. Comforting had been the aim, but of course he might’ve missed the mark. He often did, and usually Rose didn’t mind, but … well. “Oh, yes, of course. Go… uh, shower. I can start this on my own, no problem. You really look terrible,” he assured her.

Rose huffed, clearly not happy. What? “Thanks a lot, git. As if you look any better.” She turned around and moved to the bathroom, muttering angrily under her breath. 

Oh. Rude. Still, much had to be done, and he resolved to make her a big cuppa for after the shower, with the right amount of sugar and milk. But first, a bigger map. 

Quickly, he tore the white table-cloth from the table and placed it on the floor, then kneeled to copy the floor-plan onto the bigger surface.

“What … is that our table-cloth?” 

He jerked out of his work and from their assembled survey-sheets and looked up. Rose, wearing a bathrobe and her blue-pink fluffy slippers, had apparently left the shower. She looked gorgeous, with her still-wet hair and the fine glow the hot water had put on her skin. The annoyance from before seemed gone, and he felt like he’d never seen someone as beautiful before in his life. 

He blinked at her, then at the cloth, now hanging from one of their walls with marks and dots and needles all over. Then, he remembered. Tea! 

Trying to get up quickly, he realized that one of his legs had fallen asleep. Pins and needles were rushing into it, but he ignored it and hopped across the room. “Tea, I wanted to make you tea. Sit, I’ll bring you tea, you can… no, you can just sit and rest, you look lovely, now… where’s the tea?”

Rose giggled a bit, then pointed him to the cupboard. Oh, right – he knew that! “What have you been doing? Oh… I see. Huh…” 

While he boiled the water, Rose was going through his work. He enjoyed watching her work, loved seeing her turning everything she saw around and around until she understood it, a small smile spreading out once she did. She was quite smart, and in a lot of ways, much better than he was with figuring things out. 

When he brought the mug over to the table, she seemed to have caught up. “So, we only have a few customers dreaming strange dreams,” she murmured, pointing to the pile of papers on her right. “And uh… five employees who do. I don’t remember much from school, but as far as I do, it’s not much of a statistic, is it?”

“No, not really. Too few data-points, and the shoppers and employers were all over the place.” He pointed to his map, indicated the dots which were the ‘dreamers’. Blue for employees and red for customers. “We need Pete’s data as well to make any valid point here, there’s not much of a pattern. We can’t even be sure it’s purely in the arcade, since we don’t have any data from outside!” He hoped Peter had thought about that and sent some of his people into the streets. 

“So… what do we know so far?”

He let out a deep breath, realizing on the exhale how truly tired he actually was. Maybe he should go take a shower as well. Being tired and subsequently needing sleep was such a waste of _time_. How did people cope with losing so much of their short time on earth with sleeping? But – as unwelcome experiences had proven – there was no way around it. “Well. We know that it’s not just Donna and her work-mates who dream of strangers. We know that fifteen people have repeatedly dreamed very vividly of completely unknown people who didn’t do anything interesting during those dreams, and that they all are in the arcade regularly.”

“Yeah. What’s it mean?” Rose blew across her mug and looked at him through the steam. “Does it mean anything?”

“I really have no idea.”


	13. Chapter 13

The next day, they met with Pete at Torchwood. 

Rose could see that he was in more or less equal measures curious and weary, and stayed close to his side. She wasn’t quite sure for whose comfort it was – her own experiences with Torchwood weren’t the best, either. 

But nothing happened, and in Pete’s spacious but surprisingly homey office, he pulled their map-sheet out of the bag and hung it on the wall. 

“Oh, I see _somehow_, you already got some data-points,” Pete grouched, but Rose didn’t think there was real anger or even surprise. After all, he should have known they’d never keep their hands out. “Well, then. Let’s get to sorting. I already had my people throw out every survey where the participants didn’t dream of strangers, so it’s only about hundred we have to analyse. 

“Hundred?” Rose was astonished. So many people dreaming about random people? Then again, there was no telling if they dreamed of _real_ random people. They could be having dreams about a random movie-star, for all they knew. 

Still, each sheet that was read through got a dot on the map. And after a while, she noticed the D… him not contributing anymore but rather sitting behind the desk with his feet on the table, legs bent and hands hanging off his upraised knees. He was staring at the wall absently. “Oi, how about you help us instead of daydreaming,” she spoke, and her slap to his ankle certainly snapped him out of his thoughts.

“I am. Sorry, it’s… do you see that?” He pointed to the wall, but even when she strained her eyes, Rose didn’t see anything beyond a lot of red and blue dots. 

“No, what?”

In a fluid motion, he was up and stalked towards their map. “The blue dots. They’re not random. See?” His hands moved in a circle, and now that he had narrowed the field down, she could see it, too.

But it was Pete who spoke first. “They’re clustered more or less around this section.” He pointed, and Rose was quick to search the index for which shops were situated there. 

“Uh, ‘The Bookery’, ‘Herbal Friends’, ‘Harry’s Hairdo’ and” she looked up, “’Pence and Spencer’. Then, there’s ‘Soap’s Kitchen’ and ‘Torddy’s Toys’ on the other side. And the optometrist.”

“Huhm.” 

“Does that make any sense to you, Doc?” Pete asked, and Rose envied him the ease with which he just used that moniker. 

“No. No, not really. But we should take a look at all these, see what happens. We’d been at the Penny-shop…” 

“Pence and Spencer’” Rose clarified for Pete. 

“…and there wasn’t anything suspicious. But it seems that the area is much wider than just one store, and maybe we were in the wrong one. Or!” he raised his voice, “Or, it’s got nothing to do with the shops at all and we’re running after the wrong clue. Anyway – we have _clues_ now! C’m on, Rose, let’s go clue-hunting!” 

She snickered and helped him take down the map. Before she could nudge him to it, he turned and grabbed Pete’s hand, shaking it enthusiastically. “Thank you so much for your help. We truly appreciate it. If you have…” he grew a little timid, but only a little, and maybe people who didn’t know him well would not notice. “If you have anything you need my … advice on, I’ll help you out from now on.” 

Pete’s raised his eyebrows. “Really? Well, that’s mighty good of you.” He was being sarcastic, but there was humour in it. “I’ll make sure you won’t get too bored. But,” he added quickly, earnestly, “you be careful. Both of you, Rose, alright? I can’t even imagine what Jackie will do if something happens to you.” His eyes were fixed on her, and Rose knew those words were meant for him but the subject was her. 

She bristled. She wasn’t helpless, for God’s sake! And as flutter-brained as he tended to be, she might have to be the one protecting _him_ if push came to shove. 

On second thought, maybe that was exactly what Pete meant. 

They took the tube this time. It was quicker than wrangling the car through traffic could ever be, and they could get something to eat on the way. While Rose was carefully selecting the soggiest chips first so they wouldn’t infect the other chips with their sogginess, she observed him chewing thoughtfully on his sandwich. It had been a peculiar choice. Lettuce, cheese and ham wasn’t unusual, but he’d asked for apple-sauce and tomato-sauce on top. It had sent shudders up her spine to even imagine, but he’d been happy. 

“Okay, no,” he decided suddenly. “No, this is really disgusting.”

She couldn’t help the snort that escaped her at his astonished face. “Really? You thought this might actually be a good combination?”

“How would I ever know if I didn’t try it?” he asked, reasonably. “I like apples and I like tomatoes, so why wouldn’t I like both? But – as it turns out – I don’t. Good to know, now I’ll never have to try it again.” He threw the remains of the sandwich in a bin.

Resignedly, Rose held out her chips to him. “Here. You’re too skinny as it is, don’t make a habit of skipping meals just so you can try something new.”

Happily, he ate more than half of her chips. Salt and vinegar did seem to please his palate, Rose thought a little bitterly. But once he bounced out of the train-car and up the stairs, urging her on to follow because the escalator was way too slow for him, she couldn’t stay disgruntled, not even in jest. Now she’d decided to look and he’d decided to show, everything seemed like a big adventure.

****

After running around with him through the arcade’s hallways for another hour, Rose had enough. Whatever it was he did with his screwdriver, she couldn’t help, and he seemed to be too distracted to talk to her and explain anything he might find strange or interesting or disturbing or mentionable.

Finally, she just found one of those old-person-rest-areas and sat down with a coffee, only occasionally watching what he was doing. It was never hard to spot him. He was tall, for one, but he was also in such constant motion that people tended to avoid him and move around him like water moved around a rock.

A bouncy rock. 

It was incredibly similar to the Doctor, but once more the thought didn’t give her a sting. She took out the bundle of survey-sheets she’d packed from Pete’s office and started to go through them again, focussing this time less on the place the people had been or worked at and more on what else was on the sheets. Information about sleep-patterns weren’t terribly interesting, but there had been a box where people could describe the sort of dreams they were having, and those were truly interesting.

After three sheets, Rose frowned and took out a notebook to make her own notes. There seemed to be another pattern in there, one she couldn’t quite grasp…

Completely distracted, she didn’t notice someone approaching until that someone sat down next to her, startling her out of her thoughts. 

“Sorry,” Donna grumbled, sounding not sorry at all. Rose put away her pencil and looked at Donna, not sure what to make of it. “Don’t you need to rescue him?”

Rose followed her nod and spotted him across the way, talking animatedly with a guard who, it seemed, finally found the strange lunatic to be noteworthy enough to question him. “Naw. He’ll be fine.”

“Huh. So… what are you doing?” Donna now turned towards her, pointing at the notebook on Rose’s lap. “Writing science-fiction?”

“Actually, no. I – we – are still doing what we told you earlier. Even if you don’t believe us, _we_ still believe something strange is going on. Look,” she held out the sheets of paper towards Donna “these are all of people who had strangers appear in their dreams, more than once. They all are experiencing what you are – recurring dreams of people they never met. It’s not just you.” 

She didn’t add that it was just Donna dreaming about _him_, and that it had to be something more than just coincidence in that special case, but since they hadn’t reached the part of their truth-telling where the Doctor was on a parallel reality and had left his clone in this, Rose thought it was better left unsaid. 

“Oh, really?” Donna reached over. “Can I have a look?” 

“Sure. But … I made notes, because we already found a pattern. It’s why we’re here and not all over the place – everything seems to be centred in this area of the arcade. But,” she held up the notebook, “I found something else completely interesting!”

“Really, what is it?” His voice, right behind them, startled both of them into an undignified little shriek. He seemed unconcerned and plunked down in the last seat, next to Rose. “Because I’m getting nothing here.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, fair warning. The story from here will dip into dubious consent-issues, not between the main characters. It does get a little uhm… darker? “Predatory” I think is fitting – along the way from now on, and I’m sorry for not putting tags on that but I wanted this to be a mystery and a bit of detective-work, so telling beforehand what would be the plot seemed dumb. I swear there’s nothing really heavy, nothing really HAPPENS, but for some characters it will be scary, so… fair warning. If you’re wary, drop me a line and I’ll explain and you can check for yourself if you want to proceed or not.

He could feel his heart beating rapidly, the thump-thump so loud it was pounding in his ear. But he still tried his best to treat Donna’s presence as completely normal, not at all astounding or worth jumping up and down in joy over. From the amused look Rose was giving him, he wasn’t completely successful, but Donna didn’t seem to see it so it was alright.

What Rose showed him, though, was quickly overthrowing his giddiness over Donna and transformed into another sort of giddiness. The pattern she’d found was simple, if you knew where to look. It had at first glance appeared to be completely random, what people would have those dreams, but there appeared to be a slight overhang of females. Also, there were a few women who’d actually met the person they dreamed of but no men had had similar experiences. She’d done it, he could feel it. She’d solved the riddle!

Well… not quite solved. But he could feel it in his teeth that it was the final clue, that they only needed to put the pieces together and then they’d have it. It was _so close_! 

And yet, it kept evading him. 

“Ugh, I can’t believe it,” Donna said, distracting him momentarily from his rushing thoughts. She sounded annoyed and it was painfully familiar… But she was here, now, as Rose had predicted and as he’d not dared to hope. She was here, sitting right next to Rose, mouthy and gorgeous and so brilliant… Oh. Oh! OH!... But no. Why? Why would that… “That bloke’s just the _worst_.” 

There were more women than men, a lot more. But it could be because of the location, something random, something… Not evidence, but still it felt right, it felt important…

“Who? Oh, the one with the glasses? Hey… I saw him last time I was here, but that’s…” Rose petered off, and the sudden silence drew him back into the conversation of the two women. “C’m on, that’s ridiculous!”

“Hm?”

“That guy over there, you see him, spaceboy?” Donna pointed across the walkway towards the bookshop, where a skinny young man with thinnish hair, skewed glasses, bad skin and a surprisingly big nose was talking to a young woman with long, dark hair that fell down her back in elegant curls. He… didn’t quite see what was noteworthy about him. Sure, it might be a bit surprising that the woman seemed to be interested in the fellow if you considered the fact that humans tended to be a little prejudiced towards people that didn’t fit into the realm of ‘attractive’, but then again, who were they to judge? He opened his mouth to say just that, but Rose pre-empted his sentence. 

“Last time I saw him, he had this gorgeous blonde with him, and now he’s chatting up _her_. And I mean, he must have one hell of a pick-up-line to get even as far as talking to her, but it seems to be actually _working_.”

Donna snorted. “Yeah, but he's got not really much stamina in the keeping-department, if you know what I mean. He’s got a different girl every week, but they never stay. Must be a real shit in the sheets.”

He kept looking and now that he was paying attention, he saw the man – boy, really – touch the young woman at her arm. Just as she wanted to draw it away, wary of his advances, she froze, then looked again at her suitor and her whole body-language changed. 

Things tumbled into place, and he saw a picture emerging. A picture he didn’t like, _at all_, but a picture nonetheless. 

He shook himself out of his thoughts and back to his two companions who were still staring, bemused and a little outraged, at the couple who were now moving away towards the cafés. 

There was the who, and the why. Now, they only needed to find out the how.

****

He had been silent for quite a while, and it reminded Rose of the quiet evenings at home, back before he’d … well, back before he met Donna Mott, she supposed. He was watching the strange couple avidly, like a hawk would watch its prey. Dangerous. Angry.

A little terrifying. 

Apparently, he’d figured out something, and it had to do with that dork from the bookshop. She frowned, and opened her mouth to ask when Donna beat her to it.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Her brows were furrowed and she followed the… his gaze. “I always thought there was something fishy with him being such a womanizer, because he even _smells_ bad. But… how?”

Shaking himself out of the mood he was in, he looked to Rose and Donna and plastered a big smile on his face. At first, it was a horrible grimace, but it turned softer and more honest quickly. “I have no idea, yet. But I’m going to find out, and I’m going to stop him. Whatever it is he does… it’s not good.”

“No, I guess not,” Donna mused. “So,” she cheerfully changed the subject, but the cheer was just as fake as his smile had been moments ago, “that’s quite exciting and all. But don’t think for a minute that I believe all that gobblecock about timetravel and aliens and stuff. Timetravel… really? At least find a better lie to tell me next time.”

“Oh, well. If you must know,” he answered, a sharp twinkle in his eyes that excited Rose in many interesting ways, “we’re spies. We spy for the government of… Siberia, and we want to use whatever it is he uses to … grow better trees.” 

Rose snorted. “Yes, exactly. We need trees that can cope with the snow and all, so… yes. That’s what we do.”

“Right. Spies. Siberian spies. I can believe that easier than the other crap. See you around, you two.” Donna winked at them and then left, and Rose felt a deep sense of hope and happiness in her heart. 

“She’ll be back,” he said, unnecessarily. But he was smiling and soft and vulnerable, and … well, happy. Rose grabbed his hand and squeezed it, and he tore his eyes away from Donna and looked at her, completely at her. Then, he pressed her hand against his heart once more and held it there as if he wanted her to reach in and hold it, cradle it, or do whatever else she pleased with it. 

And who was to tell that it wasn’t what he wanted to say anyway.

****

“So, what is it you found out? Because I understand the basics but not… not enough to get my own eureka-moment.”

“Those are very rare anyway. Most times, new and revealing facts and inventions start with a ‘huh?’ rather than a ‘yay!’,” he said, but at her look quickly started to explain. “That man used some kind of tool to make the women he fancied look at him. My guess – well, my bet. Well… more like my best theory. Well - the most likely scenario is that he uses some kind of tool to make the women dream of him, then, after a few nights with him being in their dreams – and it really helps that they dream _ahead_ because he can plan it so he does something noteworthy for his appearance in them – he approaches them and throws them a line, and they’d be less inclined to turn him away because they already have seen him.”

“But… how does he do that, influence their dreams?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it must be something that scatters. Like… like a confetti-cannon! He aims it but particles – confetti – blow all over the place, hitting people who have nothing to do with him. He’s only interested in the woman of his fancy.”

Rose thought a bit. It seemed logical, but there was a flaw. “Why would the woman he wants dream about _him_, of all people? And if he can insert himself within dreams, wouldn’t he also be in all the other people’s dreams? But Donna didn’t dream about him, never.”

“Good question. In fact, brilliant question. There has to be some kind of – oh. OH! Yes! Yes, of course! Argh, that’s… that’s so clear, it should have been obvious!”

“What? C’m on, tell me, don’t leave me here looking like an idiot.”

He turned quickly on his heels, staring at her face. “Don’t ever say that, Rose. You’re not an idiot, you’re smart and brilliant and wonderful.”

“Well,” she blushed a bit but didn’t want to be derailed. “that’s nice and all, but I still can’t read your mind. So?”

“He’ll have to make a connection. I would bet my life on something DNA-based, because that would certainly explain why Donna is dreaming about me.”

That startled her. “What? Why? You figured out why she dreams about you?”

“Oh. Yes. Didn’t I tell you? No… no, I suppose not. Well, it’s got to be something to do with our DNA.” He grinned at her and Rose had the feeling she should really get what he was trying to say. She didn’t though, and after a moment of silence, he gave up. “Because we share parts of our DNA! Don’t you remember? I was … well, created from a piece of a Time Lord and a human person. Donna. Well, Donna Noble, but since this Donna is here, and very, very similar to Donna Noble, it’s quite clear her genetic makeup is identical. That makes her… well.” He stopped, shock spreading over his features, and this time, Rose knew exactly what he meant. 

She laughed. “She’s your mom, right? Part of you, one part of your parental DNA. Oh, I can’t wait to see her face when she finds that out!”

Horror spread over his face. “No, oh… no, don’t tell her that, please. That’s… that’s just wrong, on so many levels. Please don’t.” He sounded so horrified and a little scared that Rose took pity on him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll never. But anyway, you were saying that there has to be a genetic … trigger? Or something for the dream-influencing to work. Does that mean all the people who dream about strangers are somehow related to that stranger?”

“Oh, no. It wouldn’t need a full connection, I’d say a … a touch or some other form of DNA-transfer was enough. Maybe even touching the same … coin or device, like a doorknob. But he’d have to make sure the woman he wants _has_ his DNA on her, and it would have to be exclusive, or at least … no, not exclusive, that’s too tricky to pull off. No, it would need a quite large and… forceful piece of his DNA. Like an injection, something that makes certain it reaches her bloodstream.

Rose stared at him, open-mouthed. “But… that’s… that’s horrible! You mean he’s been injecting people with his blood? Just so he can have a shag? That’s… disgusting!” 

He looked back, astonished. “What, of course it is. Did you think it was just a little lark? He’s been preying on these women for quite some time, and I’m certain he doesn’t stop at just putting himself into their dreams. When I watched him, he touched her skin and suddenly her disquiet turned into… well. Lust.” Something seemed to reach his mind while talking, and he stopped abruptly. Rose still couldn’t quite believe that someone would do something like that, but then again… people did a lot of terrible things when they wanted something. Or someone, as in this case. “Oh… oh no. I think I know what he’s using. I just don’t know how and where he got it…”


	15. Chapter 15

They rushed out and into the tube, Rose following in his coattails – well, not coattails, as he was just wearing a parka. But still, it was achingly familiar and she let herself dream about running away from angry Flovatanian guards or hungry Pterodactyl-like … things. It didn’t matter that in the end, they only ran until they reached the subway, then they sat and waited impatiently for their stop. It was still exhilarating and fantastic, breathtaking and … beautiful.

“Do you really think they have anything to do with this?” she asked, putting her hand over his own, which had been nervously scratching on his leg like he wanted to dig through the fabric and deep into skin. 

Huffing, then sighing, he slumped in his seat. “No. Not… not really. But they’re still the first address I can think of asking. And if they know about this, they would certainly – well, hopefully – want to know that someone snatched their things and is using them very inappropriately.”

Rose leaned back as well, shoulder touching with his. He had a point, and she really hoped he was wrong – and at the same time, it would be much better if his suspicions were correct because it would at least mean that there were no other influences working their evil plans on Earth.

She smirked. Evil plans on Earth that they would have to thwart sounded incredibly enticing.

They didn’t bother going home first. It was early evening, and Pete was bound to still be in his office. Rose was buzzed in easily, and since he worked here, nobody stopped her accomplice to even check his security-clearance. 

It told Rose two things. One: even in the sad state he’d been in for the most part of last year, he’d managed to make an impression. And two: she would need to talk to Pete about his security-measures. Clearly, he was still underestimating the capabilities of those Torchwood was supposed to defend Earth from. 

Upstairs, in his office, Pete was resigned and not surprised at all to see them. Sighing, he took the glasses off his nose and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired. “What is it?”

“Have you ever heard about Pharmacytown? Bliss? Mood-drugs?” he asked Pete without preamble. “New New York? New Earth?” 

Confused, Pete scratched his head and looked across the room to Rose. But she was no help – she remembered New New York, of course, but … Mood-drugs? “Is that something the cats created?” she asked, which – unsurprisingly – had Pete even more confused. 

“What? Why would they do that? No, no – well… maybe a catkind was involved, I suppose they’re just people, and with people, anything’s possible. But not them as a whole, of course not! Oh –“ he stopped, looked at her and then, more slowly, he continued. “You mean the Sisters of Plentitude. No. No, I think they were already in prison by that time. Maybe …. But no.”

“Can anyone tell me what he’s talking about? Doc – what have cats got to do with anything? Does all this nonsense mean you figured out what was happening in the shopping-centre?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. No. I mean, yes, we figured it out. Rose did, with Donna, and they were really brilliant! But well, they didn’t quite _figure it out_ figure it out. We still need to know the how, and that’s where you come in.” His animated face turned still and serious, there was a warning in his tone now and a chill crawled over Rose. It was frighteningly similar to the Doctor’s expression when he’d seen the last Dalek, luckily this time with less hatred. “Someone is using something called mood-drugs on women to get them to bed. As in, have intercourse with them. I’ve seen the drugs – well, no, the Doctor has seen those drugs sold as patches, applicable on the skin, in a city a long, long way in the future of mankind. They have everything, from ‘Happy’ to ‘Forget’ to ‘Sleep’ to, what I think is being used here – ‘Lust’. Or maybe ‘Love’, but that would be even more sinister, so I’m hoping for ‘Lust’. And my question is: has anyone in your uh… team? In Torchwood, has anyone ever found a way to the future, or found someone or something _from_ the future? Because if not, then we have someone running around who shouldn’t be here at all.”

“What?” Rose was still reeling from the mention of those drugs – they hadn’t seen the drugs in their visit on New Earth, so he must have travelled there later – but one thing stuck out to her. “You don’t think that nerdy dunce is from the future, do you?” 

With a long, deep sigh, he stared into the distance. Then, he walked over to the desk and plopped himself in one of the chairs and gave her a look that said she should follow his lead. So Rose did, and grimaced a resemblance of a smile to Pete, who was exasperated and a little worried. Maybe because of the situation, maybe because of her. “No. Well… he could be. There’s no telling if he’s from some other time or some other planet with a shape-changing perception-filter. Would be possible, I guess, otherwise he’s just basic 21st century human who somehow acquired technology and drugs he shouldn’t have. I’m rather hoping for the first two, now.”

Before Rose could ask why, Pete spoke. “Because if he’s from Nowadays, he’d need someone who provides him with the tools he needs. Which in turn would mean we have two people involved – one dealer, one user. And as dealers are what dealers do, chances are we’d have more than one user, as well. So yes, I agree – I really hope that man is not from our time and place. We’ll have to question him, see…” 

“No. The moment you get your hands on him, he’ll disappear somewhere and we’ll never find out.”

“Oh, you think we’ll what… torture him? We’re not the KGB, for god’s sake! You just said you trust me!”

“I do!” he was actually angry, close to snarling. “I do! I trust you, Pete - _you_. But you’re part of an institution, one that hunts aliens and ‘protects’ earth. I’ve seen what that protection entails, and I’ve also seen what happens if somewhere in this institution, the wrong person gets to be in charge. I’m not going to let that happen here, not without knowing what’s even happening!”

“Oh, yeah?” Pete was angry now, a thunderous look on his face. The insult to Torchwood must have really stung. “You will not ‘let’ it happen, do you? And with what will you stop us, huh? You’re not the Doctor, just some template made from the original. You’re nothing special, you’re human, just a measly, little human like us. No great power, nothing. And from what I’ve seen this last year, you’re not even that much of a human, are you? A bit pathetic, if you ask me. You would have nothing to throw against us, nothing!”

Rose gasped. “Pete!” she yelled, furious. She’d never heard him talk like that, never this… this venomous!

He – the not-Doctor – had frozen. Without emotion on his face, he leaned forward and spoke, dangerously quiet. “And you really wonder why I don’t trust Torchwood?” 

He leaned back, then stood. From a distance, he probably looked calm but Rose could see his hands tremble and his fingers twitch. He wasn’t just angry – he was hurt. She stood as well, put herself between the two men and turned towards him. “Let’s go,” she said quietly. “This won’t help anything.”

“Rose…” Pete started, but she wheeled around on her heel to face him and he stopped. 

“I will not speak to you,” she hissed. And she wanted to say so much more, express her anger and pain and sorrow in some way, but in the end, there was nothing in her head and instead, she turned back around, grabbed his hand and left the office. 

At least she got the pleasure of slamming the door.

***

Outside, she stomped away from the building as fast as she could. She wanted to scream and cry, curse as much as she could because she was so _angry_ and her heart felt full to breaking-point. So she did.

He kept up with her but kept his distance, and when she was done with yelling abuse at nothing and everything, he lengthened his stride to walk beside her. “That went well,” he said, and a laugh exploded out of her body. 

She kept laughing, realizing it was close to hysteria, but it was just so… so… ridiculous. And it hurt, hurt so much. “I just realize that he’ll never be my dad,” she sobbed, and he took her in his arms and held her close. “I mean, I would have been just as angry with my real dad, but he… he’s my mom’s husband. Nothing more. He doesn’t feel anything for me, I’m just the weird blond girl that came attached to her.”

“Shhhh,” he whispered into her hair. “That’s not true, Rose. He might be an arse, and I was this close to whacking him in the face, but I don’t believe for a second that he doesn’t feel anything towards you.” He sighed. “This complicates things. I didn’t want him to get involved and he promised he won’t, but I’m not sure I trust him anymore.” She nodded. If someone had thrown that shit at her, she wouldn’t trust them, either. “We have to talk to the book-worm before Torchwood gets their hands on him. We need to do that tonight.”

“Yes,” she agreed, pulling herself together. “Yes. I… How can we get his name and address?” 

“Donna?” he asked, clearly not sure himself. “Or maybe from the web? He might have a website, people sell comic-books online these days, don’t they?” 

She smiled. As if he didn’t know that perfectly well. She’d seen the comic-books he’d ordered, because of course he would turn out to be a complete geek. “They do, yes. Let’s speak to Donna first, though.”

She detangled herself from him and took out her phone. At the third ring, Donna answered and Rose went right in with the question. “Hey Donna, it’s me, Rose. Do you by any chance know the name and address of that little creep from the bookshop? The one who picks up all the hot women?”

_”Uh… Trevor. Trevor Something-or-other. Sherill would know, she knows everyone. Let me call you back, I’ll find out. Won’t be a minute, she’s never far from her phone.”_ Without giving Rose a chance to interrupt, Donna ended the call and she was left with the empty dial-tone.

“What did she say?” 

“She’ll call back. Come on. Let’s get something to eat, I’m starving.”

“Oh. Yes, that might be a good idea. Pizza?” 

Pizza was his go-to dish, Rose had figured out quickly. It was easy, came with variable amounts of cheese – a requirement for him, apparently – and could be topped with nearly everything. So far, he’d gone through all the normal ones and was now trying extravagant new things and very imaginative combinations. 

But she liked Pizza just fine, so it was no hardship for her to eat it more than once a week. 

They hadn’t even made it to the Pizza-place when her phone rang, and Donna chattered right into her ear. _”His name’s Trevor Grinton, and he lives somewhere in Chiswick, but Sherill didn’t know where exactly. But I guess you could always find out easily, he’s bound to attract attention, with all the girls he picks up. But... are you going to arrest him, or something? On what grounds?”_

“Possession of dangerous drugs from the future, I assume. Thanks, Donna. You’ve been a big help.”

_”Hey, don’t be strangers. I really want to find out what happened, okay? Call me.”_ It wasn’t a request, and that Donna ended the call right then without waiting for confirmation only drove the point home. 

He was looking at her expectantly, and she smiled, then grinned. “Next step – Chiswick. Let’s see if we can get this dolt.”


	16. Chapter 16

It was past midnight when they arrived in Chiswick. Rose had found the address with some clever typing in her phone and now they were standing in front of the house Trevor lived in. There was still light on but he wouldn’t have cared if everything had been dark. 

Trevor needed to be stopped. 

“Shall we… just knock?” Rose asked, and he answered by striding to the door and using the bell. Twice, in quick succession. 

And then once more, to emphasize the urgency. 

After the fourth ring, a disgruntled voice came from within, accompanied by footsteps. “Yes, yes, I’m coming, what the hell is that ruckus out there!”

The door flung open, and in the doorway stood Trevor Grinton. He looked dishevelled and rough, his eyes were redrimmed and glassy. Maybe he’d had a bit of a drug-patch for himself?

“Hello. I’m… not the Doctor, and this is Rose Tyler. We’re here to investigate …” he trailed off, because what exactly could they claim to investigate?

Rose jumped in, though. “… the disappearance of a child. He was last seen at the shopping-arcade, right close to your bookshop, and we would really like to come in and have a chat with you.” She smiled a very innocent but still commanding smile, and as usual, the recipient of that smile just gave in. Trevor stepped back and let them in. 

The house smelled dusty and faintly of sex. If this human nose could sense that, it must positively reek for a Time Lord. Or a dog. Pigs. Pigs had very good olfactory senses, didn’t they? Anyway, the house didn’t smell pleasant and it carried the right look for that, too. There was stuff all over the place, mostly clothing and papers and other rubbish. The walls looked like they were covered in nicotine, stained yellow, and yet there was no cigarette-smell in the air.

Everything felt distinctly grimy, and while Rose spun her lies in the kitchen, he took the liberty to have a look into the living-room. 

He was just browsing the books on the shelf – mostly because he wanted to make sure there was no hidden compartment but also to find out what kinds of books a man who owned a bookshop would keep in his house – when the sound of his phone in his pocket startled him. Donna’s number showed, and he quickly answered.

“Donna, wha-“

_”I had a dream again! He’s got a knife, from the kitchen! Watch out!”_

He turned at once, and there he was. Trevor, with a big kitchen-knife in his hand. He was _right there_ directly in his space, and he could only jump a little backwards before the mad-eyed bookshop-owner slashed at him. With a twist that he remembered all-too-well from his non-existence, he got out of the way. “Whoa-whoa, what is your problem!” he yelled, hoping that Rose would appear with a cast-iron pan to knock Trevor out. 

She didn’t, and that was worrying, but right now it wasn’t as worrying as the man with the knife. Grinton growled something unintelligible, some curse-words or maybe just pure anger, and he slashed again. This time, he got him and even though it didn’t hurt beyond a sting, it shocked him.

His back to the shelf, there was nowhere to go now, and he felt behind himself for the biggest book he could find without looking. As Grinton advanced, ready to stab him in the stomach, he brought the book down on Trevor’s head, knocking him out and down successfully. 

_”Hey, you, spaceman! Talk to me, what’s happening! Are you alright? Please, please – talk to me!”_ His phone. He’d not turned it off, and Donna was clearly worried. A little dizzy from the adrenaline, he looked around the room until he spotted the device on the floor by the grubby couch. 

Stumbling, he went to pick it up and now that he had a bit more time to breathe, everything that had been pushed to the side returned to his consciousness. The cut from the knife stung, and he carefully peeled his jacket away to look at the slowly growing streak of blood that was darkening his blue shirt. The cloth was slashed open and so was the skin beneath, but even without being as aware as a Time Lord about his body, it didn’t seem to be very deep or very dangerous. No bones were visible, that must be good, right? 

_”SPACEMAN!”_ Donna was yelling, from his hand now that he had picked up the phone, and he held it to his ear, surprised that his hand was shaking terribly. 

“Yeah.” His voice was rough, nearly unintelligible, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m… okay. I think. More or less. Thank you, thank you so much…” he petered out as something very urgent returned to his mind. “Rose… _Rose!_” he yelled, turning around towards Trevor, because surely, if she were alright she’d have come out of the kitchen by now, and as he turned he saw a long, iron-looking stick swish in his direction and then there was a sharp pain and then that was gone as well.

****

Rose woke without transition. One second, she was asleep and the next she was awake. No tiredness or grogginess remained, which was a blessing because she didn’t like the feeling of not-quite-knowing what was happening. Especially not when the last thing she remembered was standing in a grimy kitchen with a man they suspected using drugs to get women to comply to his wishes. She had been talking, some bullshit about a lost child. She’d nodded towards the not-Doctor as he’d indicated to have a look around, and then she’d felt a touch on her wrist and then the very, very last thing she saw was Trevor’s grin and she remembered thinking that Donna was right – he really did smell terrible.

Now, she was in a car, it seemed. The movement gave it away, the constant rumble of the engine and the occasional bump when there was a pothole or manhole-cover. She was also, sadly, not in a van or on a backseat, but from the narrowness of the space quite clearly in the boot. 

Another point against this situation was the fact that she couldn’t move her hands because they were quite obviously tied behind her back, and her legs were bound together. 

How had she gotten here? What had that toerag Grinton done to get her bound, out of the house, into the car and to wherever they were now without her noticing?  
Had he maybe done even more? Rose wiggled around a little. Nothing felt … strange, her clothes seemed all in their usual place and even her shoes were still on her feet. 

That was a relief. It meant that whatever had happened, Grinton either hadn’t had the inclination or the time to touch her, and that could only be good. From the leer she remembered as they’d stepped into the house, she doubted his lack of inclination, though, which was worrying. Wherever they were going, it was bound to become unpleasant.

With a jolt, she remembered something else. Him, the person she was beginning to love, who still had no name she could call out for. Or curse for his short-sightedness in leaving her alone with a man they suspected to be at the very least sleezy, but more likely a true predator. He could be such a simple-minded _dunce_! 

Of course she was aware that she had given permission to go snooping. She was also aware that she hadn’t suspected Grinton to go on the offensive the moment they’d entered. Something must have tipped him off towards their true goal. But knowing all this didn’t make her the least bit less worried about her situation, and also no less worried about _him_. Because he wasn’t here with her, so he was either somewhere else in the car – would be smart, keeping her in the boot as a hostage, preventing him from escaping because it would mean to leave her behind – or he wasn’t with them, which could mean Trevor had slipped out of the house with her unconscious body without him noticing. 

That was… possible, and Rose really hoped that was the case. Because otherwise, it would mean Grinton’d done something to him, and that could mean any kind of _something_. Now, she’d be worried if it were the Doctor, but he _wasn’t_ the Doctor. Any kind of terrible thing could have happened, even the most terrible and the most permanent thing. 

She choked on a sob, then stopped herself with a curse. It was no good to be in a small space without light and no means of escape as it were, but being there panicking and using up valuable oxygen would be even worse. So she took a deep breath of musty, slightly damp air and tried to calm herself back down.

_He’s smart. He might not be a Time Lord with two hearts, but he won’t just lie down and die. So he’s not dead, which means there’s every chance he’ll use his big, beautiful brain and find me. All I’ll have to do was hold on, stay calm, prevent anything permanent or well… prevent anything, really, and use every chance I got to get away. Easy. You can do that, Rose. You escaped a murdering game-show, face-sucking tellies and genocidal pepperpots. You can bloody well escape from a simple, human piece of shit._

Now, all she had to do was wait for her chance. 

A lot easier said than done.

****

Someone was talking to him. He could hear the sound and rhythm of speech, but couldn’t understand what was said. Not dissimilar to being under water, he thought, but the thinking caused a sharp spike of pain to slice through his brain.

He must have made a sound and the vibrations clearly didn’t help. Neither did the increase of sound and the shaking of his shoulder. 

“S’op,” he whispered, “loud.”

Something was poked into his arm and then it felt like the floor was moving upwards, and with the lessening of the pain in his head, he started to realize what was happening. 

Stretcher, painkillers, paramedics. Someone talking to him, asking questions. Someone… someone _urgently_ talking, but maybe not to him?

Did he know the voice? It seemed to him that he did. Male. Definitely male. So not Rose.

…

Rose!

With a gasp, he opened his eyes and wished instantly he hadn’t. The light was too bright and he groaned again, but this time he shoved the pain aside and tried to sit up. 

“No, sir, please. You can’t sit up, you had a nasty blow to the head, we need to get you to hospital.” A kind, round face appeared in his vision, the rest of the face was wearing a uniform so it was easy to identify her as no threat. “And any question you have can wait, sir,” the paramedic said sternly to someone on his other side. With an effort he shouldn’t have needed, he turned his head. 

Blurry outlines of a person, dark clothes. Slightly egg-shaped cranium, not too much hair. Reddish. Oh.

“Pete,” he mumbled, and instantly Pete Tyler was there, shoving the squaking medic out of the way. 

“Where is she! Doc, come on, where is she? What happened, I need to know, I need to know where I can find her. Where is Rose!” At the last sentence, he was nearly yelling and with a slightly odd detachment, he thought that seeing Pete like this would surely tell Rose enough about Pete Tyler’s feelings for his not-daughter. 

But that was clearly not the time. Whatever had happened, Rose wasn’t here. Wherever ‘here’ was. He didn’t… what… 

“No, no, you don’t understand.”

“Mister Tyler, we do understand. But your daughter isn’t here, and he is injured, and we need to get him treated or he won’t be able to tell you anything. The more you hinder our work, the longer it will take for you to get any answers. Now move away, or we’ll have you removed from the scene!”

The medic was wonderful. He would have to get her name so he could send her flowers. Do you do that, send flowers? Maybe she’d prefer chocolate. _He_ would prefer chocolate, he’d never quite understood the romanticism in giving someone dead plants as a sign of affection. 

Flowers. Roses. Rose! He needed to find her, Rose was … she was… “Grinton’s got her,” he whispered, and Pete must have heard him because he once again shoved close to his side. Sadly, he also jostled him which hurt in his head and across his ribs. Why his ribs?

“Where? Where is he taking her! What have you done, you irresponsible maniac! Can’t you just once in your bloody life think about others before you jump into things, just _once_?” 

“Mister Tyler!” The medic was growling and their scuffle jostled the stretcher, which was so not good for his head.

“Oi!” Someone interrupted, and he knew that voice, would know it everywhere. “You big balding carrot-head get your bloody gruffy hands off him and move. Away!”

Through his still slightly blurry vision, he saw Donna’s fiery head move between Pete and the stretcher, saw her shoving his chest with enough force to drive him two or three steps backwards. “Can’t you see he’s injured? I don’t know who you are, Mister, but I bet my left kidney that he’s just as worried about Rose as you are, so don’t go around putting blame where it doesn’t belong. Also, if you’re not a policeman, what the bloody hell are you even doing here?” 

He didn’t quite get the answer, because someone was now shoving the stretcher outside and then he was loaded into the ambulance. Funny, he’d never ridden in an ambulance. For a fleeting moment, he felt his heart speed up in fear, thinking of tests and wrong anatomy and dissection and … then, then he remembered that it wouldn’t be a problem, because he was not the Doctor and nobody would notice anything wrong with him.

Well. They didn’t just randomly test DNA in the hospitals in the 21st century of a parallel world, did they?


	17. Chapter 17

Next time he was bothering to be aware of his surroundings, he was lying in a hospital-bed and felt like … what was the expression? ‘Death warmed over’. Very apt. 

Carefully, he assessed his state. Head – still hurting, but less agonizing. Ribs – painful when breathing, didn’t feel broken. Skin – something itchy and stinging across his lower ribs up to about the middle of his chest. Probably stitches, as that was what was used to seal wounds in this time. Maybe, since this was Pete’s World… no. Felt like stitches. Once more head – itchy scalp, incredibly tender spot slightly above his left temple, possibly stitches as well. Not to forget, a bandage. 

He hurt. The Doctor, and as such his memories, had been hurt quite a lot during their long life. Shot, stabbed, fallen from great heights. Hit on the head more than once, and if he remembered correctly, also at more or less the same spot as he had been. Now, not that he’d not wanted to get a better understanding of his new limitations as a human, but he’d have really preferred not to know quite so intimately that a human skull was a lot less sturdy than a Gallifreyan one. 

“Ah, Mister Smith. Good to see you’ve entered the world of consciousness.” A young man in a white coat – doctor, it would seem – had entered, a clipboard in his hand and a stethoscope around his neck. A sudden image sprang to his addled brain, of a beautiful dark face with a wonderful smile and fantastic running-legs. Martha. But no, this wasn’t Martha Jones, it was a fellow called Frank Turner, and he was telling him about his injuries. Maybe he should tune in and listen. 

“…and you’re really lucky, the weapon didn’t cut very deep. We stitched the wound up an it will be sore for a while, but there’s nothing to worry there. Keep the wound clean, change the bandages regularly, don’t shower for at least a week. That will also help with your scalp-wound. It’s a relatively harmless laceration, the skin on the head is very easily broken and bleeds quite a lot. A little more worrying is the result of the impact, but again – incredibly lucky. You got hit at the place where your parietal bone – that is the biggest and sturdiest part of the upper skull – ventures and ultimately connects with the frontal bone. The impact was enough to create a hairline-fracture in the frontal bone, resulting in a concussion. Which is quite painful and will give you a nasty headache for a while, maybe some confusion and motion-sickness. But you’re really lucky, there’s nothing to indicate lasting damage to your brain. We have had a CT-scan of your head, as is the norm with head-injuries as yours, and it would seem you dodged a bullet there.” He smiled, as if that was some achievement of which one could and should be proud of.

“ ‘don’t think I dodged anything really,” he muttered in answer, but still thanked the young physician for his explanation and care. 

“Oh, don’t worry, that’s our job,” the man replied cheerfully. “A nurse will come by soon to give you painkillers for the headache. Now, if you’re up to it, your wife is outside and wants to talk to you.”

Wife? Rose?? Surely… had he missed that much? Had she been found? Being unaware of passing time was incredibly confusing on normal days, but today it was nearly excruciating. How long had he been unconscious, how long had he been in hospital? Clearly, if he’d missed being shoved into a CT-scanner, he was probably here longer than just ten minutes. 

It felt like ten minutes, though. 

“Shall I send her in?”

“What? Oh, yes, yes, of course!” 

When the door opened, it was instantly clear that Rose hadn’t been found. That, or she’d dyed her hair, which… unlikely. So it stood to reason that the woman hurrying inside his room was Donna, which would usually make him happy but at this time, was quite a stab in the heart.

“There you are!” she griped, as if he’d taken a stroll somewhere without telling anyone. “I was really worried about you!”

“… Sorry?” he ventured, not in the mood to be yelled at or otherwise verbally abused. He needed to know what was happening – what _had_ happened – since getting knocked out. 

“Don’t ‘sorry’ me, Mister, that’s …” she stopped and wiped furiously at her face. Was she… crying? “No, I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have yelled at you. But there’s this incredible _dunce_ out there demanding all kinds of answers, and I’ve just had enough. Sorry for pretending to be your wife, by the way.”

“’s okay. What happened?”

“Well.” She took a seat in the very uncomfortable looking chair by the window, frowned and stood up to move it closer to the bed. “Well. What do you remember last?”

“Uh…” he thought back. “You were on the phone, I said I’m okay and … then Grinton hit me with something.”

“Yupp”, she popped the ‘p’. “Fire poker. Nasty thing.”

“Yeah. ‘s it, don’t remember anything more. Just… Rose…”

She took his hand, probably to halt his motions as he’d been about to roll himself out of bed. “Yes, Rose. That’s what the ginger bean out there’s worried about most. Which I understand, but it’s not like you’re being deliberately obtuse! You got your head bashed in, for god’s sake!” 

He winced at the volume. “Shh, please. Indoor voice.”

“Sorry. So, yes. You got clobbered and then I heard you drop, and … some shuffling. Don’t know what else, ‘cause by that time I’ve already hung up and called the police.”

“How’d you get there?” 

“What do you think? I drove, you prawn.”

“… why?” 

She blushed and looked uncomfortable, but then she steeled her gaze and locked in his eyes. “Because I was worried about you two. And rightly so, it turned out. When I got there, they were just wheeling you out and that… what’s his name anyway? The ginger fuzzball?”

Despite the situation, he smiled. “Pete. Peter Tyler. He’s… uh, he’s Rose’s father. Stepfather,” he amended. “He worries about her.”

“Oh. Well… I guess I could have been a bit friendlier then. But he didn’t even try to explain, all bluster and hot air and empty threats.” 

_Not that empty,_ he thought but didn’t say. “Rose wasn’t there, I take it?”

“No, she… I just got a little from sticking close to Mister Tyler. But the police had found her phone in the kitchen and Trevor’s car is missing. They seem to think he took her somewhere. Hey, now, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting up. Gonna help me?”

“What?” Donna exclaimed, then turned her voice down without prompting. “What? Are you completely nuts? You have a broken _skull_, you numbnut! What do you think you’ll achieve out there, half-dead?”

He growled. “Not half dead. And I can find her, I know I can. There’s this… this thing … It can find her, anywhere. Just… need to find it.” He was stumbling around, only half aware of Donna’s shoulder supporting him. Heavens, he hurt, and everything was wobbly. But he knew he could find Rose and he knew he had to. If he could only find his jacket… 

“It’s there on the chair, dumbo,” Donna sighed and helped him over. “Fine. If you’re going to be an idiot, I won’t stop you. Oh, is that the scanner you used on me?”

He refrained from nodding and speaking, and the noise his sonic emitted made him wince. “It knows her,” he explained, though that wasn’t exactly the whole truth.

“Oh, come on. You had her tagged, haven’t you?” She stood with her hands on her hips, clearly unimpressed. “Does she know about that?”

“Sure,” he said, though actually, Rose might not. The Doctor had tagged her with the tiny transmitter after she’d been kidnapped by some strange, completely unknown and luckily very harmless lifeforms from Delta Origin Prime, and he might have forgotten to tell her. “I think. But either way, right now the fact that she is is a good thing, right? We’ll… ugh, this headache is really distracting.” He carefully touched his head where the pounding against his skull originated. Yepp, still bandaged and still very tender. “We can find her, let’s go.”

“Great. How about you tell your father-in-law outside what you know, he’ll probably set the world on fire to get Rose back.”

That sounded really smart, he thought while carefully pulling his trousers up. With his ripped and bloodied shirt, he wouldn’t be able to leave but if he turned the hospital-gown around and pushed the long ends in, he could pull off a half-way believable ‘just discharged’ look. Now… there was no way he could bend down to put on his shoes. “Donna…” he asked tentatively. “Could you… maybe?”

“What? Oh… right, of course. Well, sit down, spaceman. But I’m not aiding and abetting you in running around with a big hole in your head trying to get yourself killed. And Rose too, probably.” She went down on her knees and without fuss, put his feet into his boots. She tied the laces – not too tight but just exactly right – and he felt himself blush. It was a completely harmless gesture but the tenderness with which she did it felt intimate and very, so very heartbreakingly familiar. He swallowed.

“Thanks.” 

“Don’t mention it. Now – I’ll go see if I can find Mr Tyler. And you really should stay here in bed, you’re pale as a sheet. And with the shiner you’re going to have in a few hours, you’ll look like a badly made-up clown.”

She left him sitting on the bed, ready for leaving but not actually _ready_ to leave. Adrenaline was a fantastic invention of nature, but once it wore off, it let one fall down into a pit of exhaustion. Add pain and injury, and he really felt like he’d been put through a blender. 

Blimey, was that how all humans felt when they got hurt? How did they cope?

So since he was clearly out of order now, he could do the responsible thing and wait for Donna and Pete and let the police – or well, maybe even Torchwood, though he’d prefer the police – find Rose.


	18. Chapter 18

Without being able to see her watch, Rose didn’t know how long she’d been in the car. But at a guess, she’d say it was at least half an hour, but probably even more. Her bladder desperately wanted to agree with her and she cursed her decision to have a big coke with her pizza. If they didn’t stop soon, or if the bloody _wanker_ on the driver’s seat would find any more potholes to go through, she wouldn’t be able to hold on. 

Oh well. There was the pothole. 

The creeping, wet warmth that was spreading down her left leg was the last straw, dislodging the lump of fear in form of a hitched sob. And once started, she couldn’t stop anymore. For a while there, she let herself go. Cried and sobbed and screamed into the boot’s musty floor, kicked against the car’s side with all the force she could muster – not much, sadly – and yelled at the top of her lungs for anyone, _anyone_ to hear her and help her and call the police. 

Rose didn’t know how long she raged, but in the end, absolutely nothing changed. They were still driving – god, was he going to bloody Scotland with her? – and she was still trussed up like a turkey for Christmas-dinner. And she was still alone, and neither the Doctor nor the not-Doctor would be able to help her. 

Her breathing hitched from the crying, but after two, three deep breaths, she was able to calm down again. Right. No help. She needed a plan, because even if Grinton _did_ drive to Scotland, he would still, at one point, have to open the boot to get her out. 

What would the Doctor do in that situation? 

And which of those things would a) actually help and b) be something she could pull off. She was – for all intents and purposes and no matter how much she’d wished for it once or twice… or maybe a dozen times – not a Time Lord. She was human; breakable, vulnerable, moderately intelligent human. What good would it do to imagine a sonic screwdriver that would magically hit the right frequency to let Grinton’s head explode when she didn’t have one! And talking your way out of a dungeon – God, no, she really hoped there would be no dungeon involved! – was bloody fantastic, but she lacked the showmanship of the Doctor on a good day. As she was tied up, grimy, puffy-eyed and had just widdled in her knickers, it was clearly _not_ a good day.

So, don’t ask what the bloody Doctor would do. Ask what she could do – no. Ask what Captain Jack would do! She giggled, imagining his voice and his smirk and his pure bloody-mindedness in a situation like this. 

And then she stopped giggling and started to plan.

****

Even without his sense for time, it was clear that he’d been sitting here for ten bloody minutes now, and the only person coming in had been the nurse with a packet of pain-pills, which he appreciated but which wasn’t what he really wanted. The wall-clock told him that it had truly been ten minutes. How long could it possibly take to find a man who was that ticked off at him? Wasn’t Pete bound to be close to hand? 

Maybe there’d been a lead on Rose. He took out his sonic and set the right frequency. The transmitter was still working but the signal was weak. It had been better when he’d checked it before, so wherever Rose was, she was moving away. Soon, she would be out of range. 

“Nope,” he said to the wall-clock. “Not letting that happen.” Carefully, he turned around so the world wouldn’t swim so much and searched for something to write. Thanks to the NHS – well, BHS in this world – there were pen and paper in the little drawer next to the bed. In big letters, because writing small _and_ legible was beyond him now, he wrote a message for Pete. It included the words ‘Rose’, ‘Tracker’ – because ‘Transmitter’ was too long – and the transmitter’s frequency. That was actually all the words it included. On any other day, he might have added more but as it were, these should suffice. 

With exaggerated care, which wasn’t actually exaggerated, he shuffled out of the room and looked left and right. Since there was still no sign of anyone who mattered, he turned towards the exit and shoved everything but Rose from his mind. He’d find her. There was no other possibility. 

The elevator-ride was fine, nobody seemed to be surprised to see a pale, bruised man in the hospital, and nobody cared that he was on his way out. No-one stopped him when he walked through the sliding doors and none of the persons coming his way or hurrying by cared that he pointed a metal rod in first this direction then the other, and finally followed the signal westwards.

****

“Oi, what do you think you’re doing!” Sheer bloody-mindedness had gotten him quite a way from the hospital, but even without injuries he wouldn’t have been able to get to Rose on foot. The small yellow car that pulled up beside him, driven by an angry red-head, was a welcome surprise. 

“Donna?”

“Who else, you stupid oaf.” She shut off the engine and stepped out towards him. “Blimey, you’re even paler than before.” Her voice softened. “Really. This is not a good idea. If your Rose is in a car, you’ll never catch up to it. They’ve got hours ahead.”

He blinked, trying to stop the tears from falling down his face. Everything was muddled, worse than ever, but the concussion wasn’t helping him at all to get his emotions bridled. “I know,” he said, and his voice sounded like that of a stranger. “I know, but what else can I do? Did you get Pete? Are they on their way to find her?” 

Donna’s face wasn’t inspiring hope, though. “I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was arguing with a policeman, waving his credentials around as if he were the president. I tried to get between them but they ignored me.” He could hardly believe that were possible; Donna Mott – and Donna Noble – was not a person you could ignore. “But I overheard a constable saying Trevor’s car was caught on camera on the M1, so they’re surely close to catching him! You can go back to your bed, come on. Let me drive you.”

They had a lead. That was good. He could sit down and maybe sleep a little, and when he woke Rose would be there, safe and sound. He let himself be led towards the car and carefully moved into the passenger seat. Donna even took care not to slam the door, and he was so grateful that he nearly cried again. She sat next to him and started the engine, and only when she was busy reversing did he think to ask. “What direction?”

“Hum? Oh, well, back to the hospital. Direct route.” 

“No, no. Not us. Rose! The police. Which direction is Grinton’s car going?” 

“Oh, well – as the M1 goes all the way to Yorkshire, I’d say ‘North’ is a good bet.”

No. That was wrong, surely? He checked the sonic again. Still West, the signal was still coming from the West. “Stop, turn around.”

“What? No!”

_”Turn around or get out of the car, now!”_ he yelled at her, too angry to be polite, too worried to care about the blizzard in his head. “We’re going in the wrong direction, _they_ are going in the wrong direction! Rose is West, I know she is, the signal is coming from the West. By now, even if they took the … the… the stupid circle-road around the city, they would be on a direct route westward. Oh – oh, no. NO! I … ow, my head. Please, Donna. Please! I know where they’re going. Please, help me. Help _her_! I promise, you can just wait in the car, or go straight to the police once we’re there, but please… In fact, you can leave here, let me borrow your car and I’ll go alone, but I can’t… I can’t…”

“Who-ho, hold your horses, cowboy.” She stopped the car – no! – and turned towards him. “First of all, this is my own car. My first-ever car, and I bought it from my own money. There is no way I would let you borrow it even if you were healthy, but as it is, I wouldn’t even let you borrow a tricycle! Your brain is damaged, you prawn! You can’t even see straight – don’t give me that look, I know you can’t because” she grabbed his chin and turned his head a little to the right “I’m sitting _over here_! Second… I forgot second. Are you certain Rose is going west?” 

He felt his eyes sting and gave up trying to hide his tears. There was being stoic and there was being stupid, and he was done being stupid. “Yes, I’m sure. One hundred percent, and I don’t tend to overuse that number. She’s going West, and I’m … well, very sure that she’s on the way to Cardiff.”

“Cardiff? What the bloody hell would Trevor want with her in bloody Cardiff? Why would he go there of all places, there’s nothing there!”

“There’s a temporal rift. Please, Donna. I know it sounds far-fetched but I know it’s where she’s going – where he’s taking her. Please. I’m begging you.” If he could have, he would have gone on his knees to make her understand how much he was begging. “Please.”

Donna turned away and stared out of the windshield while he felt the minutes ticking by, the chances slipping through his fingers. “I must be going bloody mad,” she finally sighed and turned the car-keys. “Bloody mad.”


	19. Chapter 19

They must have been travelling for about another hour. By now, her trouser-leg was cold and damp and her thigh had started to itch. Not to mention the smell, which hadn’t really helped the overall-odour of ‘disgusting’. 

But Rose’s face was dry and her breathing was calm, and when the car finally stopped, her heart started to beat faster but she was still prepared. _Wait for the moment, Rose,_ the American voice in her head was saying. _Don’t overshoot by being too fast. Assess the situation, find the weak link, wait for the right time. Be patient. Be smart. You can do it, Rose._ She felt herself smile in response. 

When the boot-lid opened, the interior lights went on. But she’d known they would and closed her eyes, and once she felt hands underneath her body, she opened them again. 

Grinton was trying to heave her out of the car, clearly not expecting her to be awake. Good. Why shatter his expectations? She told her body to relax, stay limp, and waited for what was to come. 

Huffing, Grinton managed to get his hands underneath her armpits and turn her around, heaving her upper body up so she had her back to him. Now able to look, she got her first glimpse of the prison she’d been in. 

It was dark green and looked very 80s, but it had a really big boot. She supposed she should be grateful for that, had it been smaller she’d be really cramped, not just uncomfortably achy. For a fleeting moment, she thought that the boot was actually bigger on the inside, and she had to concentrate hard to not laugh or otherwise give away that she was awake. 

“Ugh, I’ve had lighter broads than you, blondie,” Trevor muttered right into her ear, and all hilarity escaped. He heaved her out and over the boot’s rim, which hurt, and let her legs dangle on the ground. “Really, girl. What did you eat? Well,” his voice turned contemplative “at least you’ve got a nice rack.” She felt his hands squeeze her breast, and she wanted to scream and kick him in the balls, preferably with steel-caps. Still, she resisted. _Play possum, Rose. Assess and wait_.

Luckily, Trevor-the-leech decided to change his way of carrying an unconscious woman and bent down to sling her over his shoulder. While that gave him the opportunity to slap her bum – which he used, of course – it gave _her_ the opportunity to have a careful look around. 

First thing she noticed was the darkness. There were a few dim streetlights, but beyond that, nothing was there for her to recognize or even judge the time. It was February, and the sun wouldn’t rise before seven. Ergo – it wasn’t yet seven, probably not even six. How long had they been travelling? It had been after midnight when she and he-with-no-name had gone to see Trevor Grinton. Let’s say it was one when he got her unconscious… that would mean nearly five hours! She’d never been five hours in the car! Or had she? Who knew how long she’d been asleep? 

No, she told herself. This won’t help. What happened, happened, you cannot go back in your own timeline. Knowing how long she’d been in the hands of that creeper wouldn’t do her any good. She banished the thoughts about time and timing and continued her search for clues about her surrounding.

The air smelled fresh and clearer than she was used to. _Well, Dorothy, you’re not in London anymore_. Hopefully, she was still on the same planet as London. There were gulls, she could clearly hear their sorrowful screams in the distance. Water, probably the sea. Good. Britain was an island, so that didn’t narrow it down _much_ but it still ruled out … well, not that many places, really. 

The pavement she saw while swinging from Grinton’s back was no help whatsoever, as nobody had yet written city-names on the paving. But as she – very carefully – raised her head a little, she saw a street-name. And it was unintelligible, with too many consonants and nearly no vowels. 

Oh great. Wales, then. 

If she was lucky, this would be Cardiff. And if this was Cardiff, maybe the Doc… no, not the Doctor. _He_ would know she was here. But to find her and get her home, she still needed to be free because being a hostage really didn’t suit her at all. 

And being a helpless victim was completely out of the question. 

“Girl, you should go on a diet,” Grinton chuckled and she wished her legs were free so she could kick his nose in. “But luckily, we’re here.” They had stopped moving in front of a ramshackle, dull-grey house with a fugly, greenish door. She couldn’t see more than that, just glimpses while Grinton turned to get keys out of his pockets. After closing the door behind them, he heaved her up again and pressed his shoulder into her lower stomach. Good thing she’d already emptied her bladder, otherwise she’d have done it now. On second thought, she’d have really enjoyed peeing over his shirt. With huffing and puffing, he carried her up the steps, not caring that she started to swing and more than once nearly got her head knocked against the wall. If she had been truly unconscious, she might by now sport a concussion. 

_Arse_, she thought, counting the steps. It wouldn’t really help, but there wasn’t much else to do. The stairs were in dire need of a broom, the whole house smelled damp and stale, as if nobody had lived in it for a long time. She couldn’t spot any furniture, but she couldn’t see very well from her position anyway. 

At the top of the stairs, Trevor-the-leech stepped into a musty room and without warning, he threw her over his shoulder and onto a bed. It creaked and her weight made her bounce, and since she hadn’t expected it, she couldn’t prevent her cry of surprise. 

“Oh, hello, blondie.” Trevor grinned down at her “You’re awake now, are you? Well, good thing – I don’t like being all alone with no company.” He chuckled lecherously. “Let’s make you more comfortable. Oh…” he stopped from untying her, sadly before he’d removed the rope from her legs. “Did you have a little accident, gorgeous? I can get you out of those soggy knickers, it’s probably really uncomfortable, don’t you think?” 

Rose didn’t have to be silent anymore. “Hands off, you slimy turd!” She spit in his direction, without success. “What are you doing, where am I? Where is… he, what have you done to him!” 

“He? Oh, you mean your ‘partner’? Right. Well, he’s been disposed. Bashed his head in, clearly dead as a rat. Great pests, rats. Shouldn’t let one roam about.”

Fear spread in her insides, freezing her long enough for Grinton to undo the ties on her wrists. She realized a little too late and when she started clawing and hitting, he already had one of her arms pinned under his knee, tying it to the bed-post. “Don’t worry, little minx. We’ll be good friends soon, but until then, I’ll leave you in a little more comfortable position. Can’t be good to sleep in the car all morning, now.” He chuckled again, and Rose wanted to kill him and wipe that smarmy grin off his face. 

Instead, she bit him in the upper arm. 

Grinton screamed and swore and knocked his elbow into her face. He hit the bridge of her nose and the world exploded in stars, sadly not half as pretty as the real ones and very, very painful. 

“That’s your own fault, you stupid cunt! Now look what you made me do – just be quiet and stay still or I’ll just kill you right here. Wouldn’t even take me much, just press your neck here,” he did, slowly cutting off her air-supply, “and it’ll be over real soon.”

Rose had been afraid the whole time since waking up, a constant gnawing worry churning in her insides. There’d been a short moment of fear, but now, unable to breathe, fear turned into utter terror. _I can’t die, not like this, not here. I’ve seen the end of Earth, seen the wonders and terrors of the universe. I’m not bloody dying in a gringy old house in bloody Wales! _

Luckily, Grinton stopped the pressure. “See? Now this is much better, blondie. Just be calm and quiet and a good little girl. I’ve just gotta pop into the … shop” he smirked “and find something to help you like me. Now be a good girl and wait. Can you do that for me?”

_Assess, wait, act. Don’t get killed, don’t get too immobilized. Use your strength and your brain and most of all – always be underestimated. _

Rose nodded, and it didn’t take much acting to put fear and terror on her face.


	20. Chapter 20

Trevor was gone. She’d heard him stomp down the steps and listened for the door to slam before she started operation ‘Get out of here’. She moved herself upwards as far as possible, ignoring the ache in her nose, then sat up against the head of the bed. It was awkward and uncomfortable, with her arms spread out to her left and right, but it gave her a better vantage-point. 

The room was – not surprisingly – very dusty. Apart from the bed, there was a dresser and a small table, a wobbly chair that didn’t look like anyone could use it and that was about it. Across the door was a small window, which looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the house had been built, and its size didn’t leave her much hope that she’d be able to squeeze through. But it was a possibility, so she didn’t rule it out just yet. 

The door had been shut but she hadn’t heard a lock turn. If she was lucky, Trevor had been over-confident and she could just walk out of here. 

Well, provided she got out of the ropes. 

“Now, Jack. What do you do in this kind of situation? And don’t tell me you’ve never been tied up on a bed,” she muttered to herself. _Use whatever tools are available, Rose. Don’t rely on things you carry in your pockets, you’d be surprised how often you find yourself naked. _

“No, I’ll never be surprised by your ability to be unexpectedly naked.” But the image, interesting and unwelcome as it may be, provided her with an idea. 

She had a good set of tools available after all. Twenty-eight of them, to be exact, and she’d used them already. Rose wriggled down a little so she had a better position and started to gnaw on the knots. If all else failed, she could try chewing her hands off, but that would be her absolute last resort. She wouldn’t be able to grow them anew. 

To her own surprise, the Leech was not an expert in the art of tying up women. _That’s because he usually doesn’t need to_, she thought with a shudder as the first knot came undone. Now with one hand free, getting the second one untied was child’s play. 

Quickly, she took off the ropes around her ankles and then allowed herself a few seconds to scratch the itchy skin on her thigh that had been driving her _bonkers_ for the last hour or so. Good. It would be fantastic if she could change her underpants and jeans, but that could wait. 

First, she checked her pockets for her phone. It wasn’t there – not that she’d expected it to be, but well… Without instant means of rescue, she hurried to the window to have one more of her suspicions confirmed. Too small, and also nailed shut. Well, she’d prefer the stairs anyway. 

The door was indeed open, there wasn’t even a lock in the wood. Sadly, between the stairs and the upper corridor was a heavy-set steel-door, which was very much locked. Rose tried pounding on it for a few times, just so she could say she’d tried, then decided to explore the rest of the level. 

Apart from the room she’d been held in, there were three other doors. Two to the left, two to the right. None of them were locked, and there was nothing of help in any of them. All windows were small and dirty, and even though two weren’t nailed shut, there was nothing but a steep drop to the ground. 

If push came to shove, she’d probably just jump. But she really didn’t want to, and there had to be a better way out, there just _had_ to be. 

Maybe she could hide behind one of the doors and use the element of surprise to knock Grinton out. She could use the chair, or something else from one of the rooms? Rose looked around, then to the floor because more than once in her life, the answer to a problem had been right in front but out of the line of sight. It was when she looked up to the ceiling that she felt the glimmer of hope grow. 

There was a trapdoor to the attic. 

She quickly went to get the old chair, praying that it would hold her weight and set it so she could reach the hatch. It was heavy and stuck from disuse, but it wasn’t nailed closed and when she hung her weight on it, the old hinges moved and the trapdoor opened, revealing one of those fold-out ladders. “Yes!” she hissed, then bit her lip to listen carefully. 

Outside, someone was starting a car. Someone else – or the same one? – yelled something she couldn’t understand, maybe in Welsh or maybe just drunk. Rose bit her lip. She could try calling for help? Open a window, get one of the early-risers to call the police?

But what if they didn’t? If her abductor would hear her and hurry back here, taking her somewhere nobody would find her and next time, he’d make sure she couldn’t get out of the ties. 

No, she decided. This was a good chance, and she wouldn’t waste it for a lesser chance. Carefully, she unfolded the ladder and creeped up, checking each step to be sure it would carry her weight. 

The attic was very, very dusty and the number of cobwebs was impressive. She felt them in her hair and on her skin but wouldn’t let it deter her. The roof-window was tiny, but they were built to let even sturdy men with tools through to fix leaks and put new roof-tiles on, so she wasn’t worried she would be stuck. The sun wasn’t quite high enough to be seen over the roofs of the neighbouring houses yet, but it was light enough for her to see shapes outside. Inside the attic, an old table she found by bumping her leg into it would provide her enough height to crawl through the window without problems, and when she brought it over and put her upper body outside, it felt like a curtain of despair had lifted from her shoulders. 

Now, with an escape-plan established, she needed to make sure Trevor wouldn’t just follow her and get her again.

****

Donna was yawning for the fourth time in the last hour, and he was cursing his new-found and never-before-experience with the Infectious Yawn. It was terrible, not being able to control his own mouth when someone yawned close to him – not that he had much experience with controlling his mouth normally. 

“Really,” Donna spoke through another really impressive yawn, “stop with the yawning or I’ll pull over.”

It wasn’t worth arguing that clearly, she had started it, so he just apologized silently. It made her look over, concern on her face. “How’s the head, space-cadet?” 

“Fantastic,” he muttered. It was fantastic. The pounding was less drums and more power-drill now, and it felt like someone was pushing nails behind his eye. The cut on his chest stung from the sweat that was slowly getting into the bandage and his ribs were throbbing in pace with his heartbeat. “But I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“Right. Why should I worry, I hardly know you. You’re completely mad, completely off the rails bonkers, and you already infected me with your bonkers-ness. I’m driving to bloody Cardiff in the middle of the night – oh, no, wait, it’s already _morning_ \- and there is no way I’ll be back in time for work. But of course, no need to worry.”

She glanced over. He saw it from the corner of his eye, not daring to turn his head in fear of upsetting his stomach. He hadn’t wanted to give Donna a reason to turn back so he’d not told her about the nausea. “We’ll find her. She’ll be fine. She strikes me as a very tough woman, your Rose. She’ll be completely fine. Hey, how about you tell me what exactly Trevor is doing? You haven’t told me much yet, only that he does.”

He sighed. “You won’t believe me anyway.”

At that, Donna grinned. “Yeah, probably not. But it would keep me from falling asleep and at least it’ll be entertaining.”

Resignedly, he started with “So, there’s this rift in space and time and it’s sitting right there in Cardiff.”

By the end of the story, his head was pounding and his mouth felt like he ate a fuzzy snarlough from Helias Minor. Very fuzzy. But Donna had been listening intently – well, either that or completely blocking him out and watching the road – and now there was silence and he realized they’d reached the outliers of Cardiff. He wasn’t used to go to Cardiff by car – ha, funny, Cardiff - car? – and he wondered what else he – the Doctor – missed by always taking the very, very direct route to his destinations. 

Then again, oftentimes he’d completely missed his destinations, anyway. 

“Now, where do you want me to go?” There was a faint glow of the approaching dawn on the sky. Nautical twilight, humans called it. Genius, to separate the different phases of upcoming sunlight into three, the Doctor had always thought. By default, he shared the sentiment. 

There was enough light from the streets and houses to see, but if they had been somewhere without habitation, the sky turning a different shade of dark-blue from the earth would be the only indication that the day was starting to begin. “What time is it?” he asked, throat scraped raw from talking and worry. 

“Oh… bit over half past five. Phew… At some point today I’ll have to call the office to say I’m sick. But I guess that can wait.” They fell silent again, Donna driving and he trying not to worry too much. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but the reason they were here didn’t allow for him to call it comfortable, either. “So, what’s your scanner-thingy saying, where should we go?”

He took it out of his pocket. He’d switched it off to save batteries – the indignity of using _batteries_ for his sonic! But there had simply been no way to invent a source of indefinite power-supply without anyone in the lab noticing, and even though he liked humans very, very much, he didn’t underestimate their ability to abuse harmless things just to kill and destroy. Now, he switched it back on and waited for the whine to fall into the right pitch, then listened. 

He’d been so sure Grinton would go to Cardiff, and that Cardiff meant the Millennium Centre that he only now realized how stupid Grinton would have to be. “Still west. I don’t think he’s in the centre, maybe some suburb? Industrial area? I don’t know, somewhere … lonely.” _Unobserved, where nobody would hear screaming_, but he didn’t voice his thoughts. Donna was bound to understand it anyway. 

“Fine, so keep your navigation on and give me directions. And stop worrying so much, you won’t be any help to her at all if you make yourself sick from concern.” She lowered her voice to the point he could hardly hear her. “Sicker than you already are, mate.”

They kept driving while the sky slowly started to turn a little less-dark blue.


	21. Chapter 21

_The sky is beautiful_, Rose thought from her perch on the roof. So many shades of blue, stars slowly fading away from the stronger light that was coming from the sun. _Sol_ she thought with a smile. _Her name is Sol_. 

She’d done some re-decorating in the room she’d been held captive in, had stolen the ropes because Sam Gamgee had taught her that you’d never know when you were in need of a piece of rope. Then she’d shuffled on the dusty floor to hide the direction of her footprints except where she went directly to one of the windows in the room on the opposite side of ‘her’ room. She’d hitched it open, left enough marks to convince nearly anyone that this was where she went out. She’d even torn a piece of her blouse off and hooked it on a big splinter. _Smart girl_, the voice in her head said, and she could hear Jack but saw another man’s face. Rose’d nearly sobbed a little, for a moment allowing worry to crowd her mind. _No,_ she’d banished it soon, _he’s fine, you’ll be fine, there’s no need to worry_. 

Last thing she’d done was place the old chair in the ‘escape room’ and then she’d gone up the ladder and used the rope - _See? Ropes are bloody useful_ \- to pull it up and close the hatch. Hopefully, without special equipment or alien senses – she was still not quite convinced Grinton was purely human – nobody would see the trapdoor. For extra security, she’d used one of the ropes to tie the hatch shut. 

Then she’d gone out the window and that’s where she was sitting now, on the rooftop in the bitterly cold February morning, waiting for enough light to get on with it and get down. 

As it was, she could barely see the shingles. Much too dangerous to attempt some clever climbing. Now that sunlight was creeping over the hills of Wales, she saw that she wasn’t exactly in Cardiff. Well – at least not anywhere she recognized. It looked rural, and she thought she could spot the light-pollution from a city in the distance. Below her, more broken houses lined a dark street, and maybe there were fenced or walled-up gardens behind them but it was not quite possible to tell. Now and then, people started to emerge, bundled up in clothes and hurrying to their cars. She envied them. 

Sometime during her sleep – or unconsciousness – she’d lost her jacket and was now only wearing her blouse and a jumper over it. There were her jeans and her boots, at least, but it was still cold and wet and miserable, and the wind from the sea only added to the chill. 

Once more she thought about calling out to the inhabitants of the houses, but what would they do? Call the police, or the fire-department? By the time they got her off the roof, Grinton would have either gone or would have a speech prepared that would lead her right back into his clutches. 

No, she’d wait and get down herself. Right now, it didn’t look like Grinton was coming back home, and if she judged the ruralness of this place correctly, it would take him some time to get to the rift and back again, even this time in the morning. 

Well, maybe especially this time in the morning, as it seemed to be around half seven now and more and more people would be on their way to work, and kids on their way to school. She fervently hoped for a lot of construction-work. 

_Don’t get incapacitated._ Right. Sitting in the freezing morning would not help her get down. Carefully, Rose slid along the gable on her bottom. She wouldn’t be able to walk on the narrow thing on a dry, sunny day, so today she wouldn’t even attempt to. At the end of the house, she took a peak down. Hm. No convenient tree, no ladder and no flat-topped house she could jump to. 

Bloody hell, she’d have to try the other side. 

It took quite a while longer to arrive on the other side of the house, as she’d been closer to this one due to the location of the roof-window. There were also three chimneys in her way she had to carefully navigate around. 

On the western side of the house, though, she finally got lucky. The neighbouring house was directly attached and slightly lower, so she’d only have to slip-jump down to the next roof. There was a balcony on that house, and while it would mean she’d have to slide down the roof and hang from the rain drain, it was doable. _Well, what are you waiting for then? Get on with it and go rescue yourself_. 

Rose allowed herself a small smile and then turned around so she could slide down to the other building. For a short moment, her feet dangled in the air until she felt her toes touch the gable. _One small step for Rose…_ she giggled to herself, then she was on the roof and continued her bottom-crawl across to where she’d seen the balcony. 

The sky was turning a beautiful shade of purple now, and under different circumstances she’d have taken the time to watch the sunrise from her vantage point. As it was, she was cold, miserable, her legs and wrists ached and she couldn’t really feel her fingers that much. 

It would have to wait.

****

“Wait, turn right!”

Cursing, Donna hit the break and put the car in reverse. It was a narrow road with cars parked on both sides, and here and there huddled figures in coats and hats and scarfs went on their hurried ways. The houses looked sad, breaking down from lack of care and lack of funding, and the occasional pile of garbage-bags in front of them only added to the impression of poverty. 

“Well, at least this looks promising. If I had abducted someone, I’d definitely put them here. Those people? Won’t care about anything they hear,” Donna said, trying to lighten the mood. Not … not exactly successful, but he appreciated the effort nevertheless. 

As if to underline her statement, a woman in a doorway yelled insults as she tightened her jacket around her, her stocky frame shaking in either cold or anger. “Oh yeah? You bloody todger, you can shove ya fucking fags up yar fucking arse!” 

She slammed the door shut and turned sharply, and spit on the ground in front of their car when she noticed them staring. “Charming,” Donna muttered and this time, he actually smiled. 

He’d have snickered, even, if that wouldn’t hurt so much. Resignedly, he swallowed one more of the pain-pills and then checked his sonic again. “Not far, she must be in this street somewhere. Go a bit further, please?” 

Donna complied without hesitation, and they slowly crept along the rows of houses, each one sagging under the weight of time. 

He’d gotten so used to the constant _beep-beep_ that he startled when it turned into a long, continuous whine. “Stop!” he barked, and opened the door before the car had even stopped. Then he grimaced as the seatbelt he’d completely forgotten about held him back and aggravated the cut on his chest. 

He freed himself and saw Donna stepping out at the same time. So much for waiting in the car, he thought. He’d hoped and suspected, but not dared to really believe she’d be by his side until they found Rose. Whatever was different about this Donna to the one in the other world, it couldn’t be that fundamental to her character. She was still snappy and sharp-witted and incredibly loyal, and even without knowing Donna Mott for longer than… well, maybe a day and a half if you added all their encounters, he’d still without hesitation call her his best friend. 

Sadly, there wasn’t much of a competition in his life. And Rose was in a league of her own. 

“This house.” He pointed to a building with a once-red door sporting a slowly wilting wreath and the name of the occupants. It … didn’t look like the lair of a sleezy kidnapper, he thought. 

“Really?” Donna seemed to be on his page. “This? Are you sure?” 

He nodded, because the sonic was absolutely sure. “Maybe… it’s a front?” 

“Hm. Let’s go see if someone’s home.” Donna went to knock, but as she raised her hand, he heard a muffled _thud_ and went to see what it was. Might have been just a cat, but still… “Oi, spaceman!” Donna hissed, hurrying after him. “Don’t just wander off.”

They could walk around one side of the house, pass between this one’s walled backyard and the one from the neighbouring building. It was a narrow path but probably well-frequented as a short-cut for children and other slim people. “There was a noise, I think it came from the garden.” He spotted a pile of wooden boxes and climbed up, noticing that it hurt but didn’t really care enough to stop. Inside the yard, a dark figure was moving around, muttering under their breath. It looked like they were trying to find a way out? 

He could feel his heart beat in his chest, loud and overpowering. He’d know that shape everywhere, he’d swear it, but still he held back. What if he was wrong?

“Ouch, bloody hell, who puts a bucket here!” the figure cursed and it was hardly audible over the ruckus the metal bucket made when it got kicked over. 

“Rose?” he whispered, then repeated, louder. “Rose!” 

She looked up and her face turned towards the slowly creeping daylight. No matter if she’d been completely in the shadow, her expression would have lightened up a cave. He wanted to laugh and jump over the wall and twirl her around and hold her so hard they’d melt into one single person, but because he was tired and hurt and well… because he was who he was, essentially, all he said was “There you are!”


	22. Chapter 22

She looked up and there he was, behind the wall to her right, his face pale in the early morning light. He said something and then there was a mighty _crack_ and with a yelp, his face disappeared.

Rose didn’t wait to find a normal exit. With a short sprint, she ran towards the wall, jumped up and grabbed the ledge and with her feet against the bricks she pushed up and then quickly onto the top. The first thing she saw was him on top of a pile of crates. The second was Donna - _Donna?_ \- cursing someone’s dubious ancestry. 

“You bloody oaf, what the hell did you think you were doing? Oh, don’t look at me like that, do you want to get a splinter in your arse on top of everything else? What the bloody hell is wrong with using a bloody door!” Rose climbed down to join her, which got her a surprise-hug, sadly from the wrong person. “Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re okay, Rose. Now, help me get that prawn up and somewhere else, somewhere dry and warm would be bloody marvellous.” 

“Rose,” he whispered, and she bent down to get him up and embrace him and never let him go because she’d been so bloody worried that Grinton’d been speaking the truth, that he’d been dead. Now, seeing him alive and _right there_, she could finally admit to the big ball of worry that had been sitting in her gut, shoved aside for more urgent matters. 

“Hey, I’m here. You found me!” He grabbed her arm as she hauled him up, then he nearly buckled with a pained moan. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

Donna had crawled underneath his other shoulder and held him upright. She told her about a hospital and a concussion and something about a knife and Rose felt her insides curl into a hard rock of anger. He’d been hurt. Grinton had not lied, just exaggerated. 

He was so going to regret that.

Carefully, they shuffle-carried him to Donna’s car. Rose didn’t even care if the Leech would turn up any minute, in fact she’d bloody _love_ to get her hands on him. But right now, he needed her and they needed someplace to rest. 

After somehow manoeuvring him on the backseat and shoving herself in right along – because there was no way she’d let him out of her grip right now, no _bloody_ way – Donna started the car. “Where to? Hospital?”

With his face tucked against her and the still-dim light, she couldn’t really see anything. He was clutching her sleeve and muttering _You’re okay, you’re okay_ in an endless loop, and she thought he looked pale and he wore a bandage around his head. The Leech had actually clobbered him on the head, and he was gritting his teeth and pressing his eyes shut. “I… I think maybe a hotel might be enough?”

“Oh, of course. You’re just as mad as he is! And where do we find a bloody hotel in Cardiff? I’m not a bloody tour-guide!” 

Rose refrained from commenting that, as a travel-agent, Donna might have more of an idea than she did. But instead, she just told her to drive into the city.

****

“You should call your dad,” Donna said after they had shucked him on the bed in the first hotel they’d found. Rose was checking him over, bit by bit, to see what had happened. He was pale as the bed-sheet and the bandage on his head sported a bright red spot. Instead of a shirt, he wore a hospital-gown backwards, which didn’t even close completely, and the bandage over his ribs also sported the tell-tale red, though darker. Older. 

He still clung to her sleeve, and she wasn’t sure how conscious he even was right now, but she wouldn’t let go of him even if he were asleep. She moved to undo his laces but kept his hand in her own right one. 

“Oh, Rose. You should really get some bandages.” She looked to where Donna’s eyes were resting and saw the raw, abraded skin on her wrists. “Seriously, what do you two have against the BHS? You both should be in hospital, and you both should really call the police. Or at the very least your father!”

“My dad’s dead,” she murmured, trying to take off his boots. “Died when I was a baby.”

“Well, fine – stepdad, then. Rose!” Donna grabbed her hand which had been struggling with its task. “Stop it. Let me do that. It won’t do if you tear his foot off. Go, clean your wrist, let me bandage it. Are you hurt anywhere else?” Her voice was soft and careful, and there was a quality of tenderness in it that Rose really, really appreciated, normally. Right now, she couldn’t quite cope with the idea of letting the events of tonight catch up with her. She needed to be busy, to do something besides think and remember, and taking care of him now was the perfect distraction. 

It wouldn’t work for long, she knew. She shook her head. “No. Only superficial.” It would have to do as explanation and reassurance.

With a deep breath, he suddenly tensed, then opened his eyes and moved to sit up a little. He was very careful and she could see that it hurt, but his eyes were on her, purely on her, and she didn’t want to interrupt him at all. 

“Rose,” he murmured and took her hand. Tenderly, he touched her fingers, one by one, then stroked along the top, then the palm. When he reached her wrist, he looked down then up again. Then he smiled, still a bit careful but a real, happy, delighted smile. “And here I was, thinking I’d need to rescue you. But you rescued yourself, I should have known.” 

His eyes shone with pride and love and _love_. “Rose Tyler. Stuff of legends.” 

Her breath hitched.


	23. Chapter 23

Rose started to shake right in front of him, and he tugged her against him, holding her tightly. She smelled terrible, of sweat and dust and mould, but it was still the best smell he could remember. She was shaking in his arms as he dragged her up on the mattress, right beside him, still close, still right there, right there with him. His gaze found Donna, who was apparently close to tears as well, and he vowed to get her everything she wanted and needed because she’d been wonderful, brilliant, perfect. He didn’t know how to express his amazement at her, how to tell her what it meant for him to have had her by his side. Not just anyone, but _her_. He didn’t think he could truly make her understand what it did to his heart to see her there, looking so much like the other Donna, the one who’d been left in the other universe, definitely lost to him and very, very probably lost to the Doctor as well. 

“Thank you,” was what he settled for in the end, “thank you so, _so_ much.” She nodded and sniffed a little, then gathered herself and straightened. 

“Right. I’m going to get something to eat because I don’t know about you, mate, but I’m bloody starving. Any preferences?”

He shook his head. “Don’t … Be careful, okay?” She sobered a bit and nodded, then she grabbed her handbag and the room-keys and left with a very unsubtle glance towards the bathroom, Rose, and the bathroom again. 

All in its time, he thought. Soul first, body later. 

In his arms, Rose had started to calm down. “Shhhh,” he hushed her when she tensed to pull away, “it’s okay. I had my own breakdown earlier, so you’re allowed to have yours for as long as you need.” He felt her choke on a laugh, then she wiped her eyes. 

“I was amazing,” she said into his chest. “I was so bloody amazing.” And she started to tell him everything, and he had to agree with her about her amazingness. Which he’d have done anyway, but the way she’d gotten herself free was truly worthy of awe. 

After she’d finished, she started to fidget. “I really need a shower,” she muttered and yes, he agreed, but knew enough not to say so. “There better be complimentary shampoo.” 

“You… need help?” 

Rose stared at him, frowning. Had he said something wrong? “I’m nearly sure you did actually mean it like that,” she finally said and smiled at him, then reached up to ruffle his hair, mindful of the bandage. “No, stay here, on the bed. I’d rather not have to pick you up from the floor or call an ambulance because your brain starts leaking out of your nose or something. You – bed. Me – shower.”

He huffed but was secretly glad. Her comment about him falling down wasn’t actually very far from what he’d feared himself. Oh, he’d have done anything if she needed him, but the bed was nice and smelled good and so he’d just lie here and be patient.

****

He might have dozed off for a minute or two, but when the key clinked in the door-lock, the shower was still on. How long had it been? With a deep sigh, he resigned himself to look at watches and clocks more regularly. Not that it had helped the last thousands of times he’d made that resolution. 

“She’s showering?” Donna asked, laden with two big bags that couldn’t possibly contain only food. “Good.” She dumped them on the floor and took her jacket off, then dug through the yellow one to pull out a t-shirt. She threw it into his face. “Here, wear that. It should suit you,” she smirked, “alien boy and all.” It was black with the outline of three little stubby … things with three eyes and antennae on their heads and the word ‘Ooohh!’ over them.

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he took off the gown and carefully poked the wound underneath the bandage. The orange-y tint of the disinfectant solution gave it a ghastly shade of yellow, and the fall into the crates had dirtied the cloth even further. He should probably take a shower. Oh, wait, he wasn’t allowed one. But he _was_ a bit rank and maybe they’d have a washcloth in the bathroom? 

Just as he tried to find enough reserves to move from the bed, the bathroom-door opened and Rose stepped out, wrapped in a fluffy towel. She looked miserable and furious at the same time and there was a darkening bruise above her nose which made him really, really angry. When she opened her mouth, Donna was right there with the blue bag. “Now, I think you might be in need of these. Here you go, I’ll send the bill later.” She shoved the bag into Rose’s hand and pushed her back into the bathroom, then closed the door behind the two of them. 

Oh well. Washing could probably wait. Instead, he tenderly made his way over to the yellow bag to look for the promised food, because frankly, he was really hungry by now. He’d just have a look, no more. 

When the two women stepped back into the room some still indeterminable time later, he’d spread the sandwiches on the bed beside him. Rose was now wearing a pair of sweats and a yellow, woolly jumper, all of which together made her look quite a bit like Jackie. “Oh, you’ve got food!” she exclaimed, but then she spotted the shirt and guffawed loudly. “Donna, that is brilliant. I love it…” her voice softened as she looked to him and then back to Donna. “You don’t even know how much I love it.”

Donna blushed and tried to hide it. She was certainly happy with her purchase but the praise seemed to make her uncomfortable. He still had no idea what the little stubby things were meant to represent, but he knew he’d wear the shirt as much as possible from now on. 

While they chewed their sandwiches, which pulled on his stitched scalp and gave his headache new reasons to flare up, Donna was giving him once more meaningful glances. Something to do with… the phone? Oh. Right. Responsibility and all that. “Rose, do you know Pete’s phone-number?” She swallowed, glared at him then huffed.

“I’ll call him later, okay? We still need to contain the Leech, because he was going to get more of the drugs and he can’t possibly run around with those, he just can’t.”

“It’s okay, I can call him. Just give me the number. Or you could call your mom?” he suggested, maybe with a tiny bit of hope that she’d agree to that and let Jackie handle Pete. But she just shook her head and put the number into Donna’s phone, then threw it at him. 

With a deep breath, he braced himself and hit the call-button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the t-shirt
> 
> https://www.stylinonline.com/toy-story-neon-aliens-t-shirt/


	24. Chapter 24

The tracksuit bottoms Donna had brought her were incredibly soft and fluffy. They had a thin fleece-lining which made them warm and would hold the chill from outside for a while, at least as long as they didn’t get wet. Rose had also been given knickers, just regular cotton ones but she’d swear they were the best she’d ever worn.

Donna had been so unbelievably kind and wonderful. She wondered if the other Donna had done such things, maybe even for the Doctor. If she had, losing her would be like losing one of the best things in his life. She was really glad there were Donnas in the universe. 

In the shower, Rose had let herself cry a little bit more. Not too much, she felt like she’d cried all the tears her body could produce. And it was more a reaction to the adrenaline that had been coursing through her blood than any real emotion, of that she was certain. Her emotions right now were all positive. Well, apart from the anger at Grinton for being such a slimy piece of lint. But she was alive, she’d been strong and smart, she’d been found and he was alive and … well, would be healthy soon. And Donna had been there, right by her side, asking by not-asking and taking her smile and the shake of her head in without questioning it. Trusting her to know herself. 

_”Thank you,” _ she’d said. _”For the clothes and for coming here and for being with him and … for being amazing_”. Donna had blushed and tried to change the subject by babbling about some inconsequential gogglecock, but Rose had seen the small, very genuine smile in her eyes. 

Now she was listening to one half of a conversation, and she didn’t know if she felt strong enough to just take the phone and talk to Pete herself. 

“No, I… no, it’s… It’s not like that!” he growled, probably something about being able to track her with the screwdriver. “And why didn’t you use the … Oh, so you’ve been on your way to Yorkshire all night, right. S’ not exactly necessary to tell me about it, was it?” His eyes turned darker. “No, of course, I understand. Couldn’t spare the time and all. Well, in that case, why’re you angry at me, then? Did you think that you not having the time to walk into a hospital-room to tell me you found Grinton’s car which didn’t even contain Grinton but which of course you didn’t know by then is any different from _me_ walking out without finding _you_ first? At least I had someone look for you but you just ignored her!” 

Rose nibbled on the sandwich-crust. No, she really didn’t want to talk to Pete right now. Maybe never again. She’d not be as polite as the D… as … as him, anyway. 

He sighed, clearly exhausted. Rose had never seen the Doctor look like this, battered and pale and so completely tired. The left side of his head was starting to sport the tell-tale signs of a black eye, and she knew that in two or three days, he’d look like a racoon. Half a racoon. “Look, Pete. Rose is here, we’re in Cardiff. In the…” he looked around, squinting as if reading the sign on the wall was too hard for him. Maybe it was, because when Donna brought him the ‘rules-and-regulations’ page, he looked relieved. “’Cardiff Golden Inn’. Can you just get here, or get someone else here to pick us up?”

He froze. “What? Why… Oh. Right. Well. Thing is, Grinton’s still here, so wouldn’t it make sense for your people to…” His eyes lost all expression and he tightened his mouth. “Yes, I’m aware of what I said. Right now, you can just chuck him in the sea or send him to Braxica Nova Minor, for all I care. But if you don’t do anything soon, _he_’ll do something. Rose is fine, but there’s no telling what he’s going to do once he gets some more of these mood-drugs. … What? Well… I guess. Fine. Yes, _fine_!”

Angrily, he pushed the button to end the call. “Bloody stubborn prune,” he muttered. “We’re stuck here for the next three hours,” he said and tried a very unconvincing smile. “Apparently, it made a lot of sense to him to send everyone who didn’t have important things to do to Yorkshire and they’re only now on their way back. Oh, and he didn’t even read my note because it was too much of a bother to-“ he bit off the sentence and winced. He didn’t have to finish it; Rose had heard enough from his half of the call to piece it together. 

“He won’t be getting any birthday-present, that’s for sure,” she murmured and awkwardly patted his thigh. 

“Right. Donna… Donna?” Donna sat on the armchair next to the bed, looking a little pale and … well, shocky. “What… are you alright?” 

“What? Oh, yes. Fine. Just adjusting all my knowledge about how the world works and such, but noooo, I’m fine.” Rose looked at her, worried. When Donna noticed, she smiled a tight but genuine smile. “No, truly. I’ll be fine. It’s just a bit … different. I can deal with different.”

He was staring at her, squinting as if he didn’t quite believe it. But then he shook it off. “Of course you can. You’re brilliant.” He smiled brightly. “You don’t have to wait with us, you can just…” 

He didn’t get far, though, as Rose would have predicted. “Oh no. Nononono. You won’t get rid of me that easy, sunshine. I’ve come this far, I will damn well see it till the end. No telling if you suddenly vanish from Earth once I turn my back.”

“Oh, wouldn’t dream of it,” he said earnestly. “We’d take you with us, of course.” 

It caused Donna to laugh out loud, and even though Rose knew he’d meant it exactly as he’d said it, she joined in with her. It felt good to be laughing.

****

“Now…” she said a bit later, when he was on his back with his head in her lap. Donna was snoring on the other side of the bed and Rose didn’t want to wake her. But he was awake, she knew from the very deliberate way he was breathing. “How is your head?” 

“Hm. ‘s not too bad. Just… well. Painful.” 

She smiled. “You’ll have a scar. Two. Oh, you’ll be real sexy, all dangerous and mysterious.”

“Really?” He opened his eyes to look up at her. “Will I get all the girls now?” 

“Oh yes. Allll the girls. As many as you want, they’ll be standing in line to get at you.”

“All that I want?” He contemplated her words. “What if I only want one?” 

“I guess… I’d say you could get her, too. She’ll be really mystified by your mysterious appearance and your dashing scar.”

“And my lovely personality, of course.” 

She chortled. “Right. That’s such a bonus.” Carefully, she weaved her fingers through his hair so she’d not dislodge the newly-applied bandage. Donna had bought some gauze bandages for her wrists and his stitched wounds, and Rose had insisted to be nurse to him. The cut on his chest had looked nasty and was slightly swollen, but not too dangerous. It was a long caterpillar of thread in his skin, alien on his body, and she wished it had taken longer than a year for him to get hurt. 

It was bound to happen, with him being essentially the Doctor without actually being the Doctor, but still she’d have preferred him to go unblemished for a bit longer. 

The headwound had looked horrific and dangerous where the caterpillar had only looked strange and wrong. It was surrounded by an immense bruise and quite a large goose egg and the hospital had had to cut away his hair at that part. It would look even worse in a few days – she’d seen enough people with bruises in the Estate to know the colour-spectrum they’d develop over time. 

“Thing is,” she said. “Thing is. What if Grinton gets away and finds someone else? These mood-drugs… will they just… I don’t know, what do they do?”

“They’re exactly what the name implies. They alter your moods, your brain-chemistry. The worst one that was used – that will be used in the future – is called ‘Bliss’. Everyone just stopped working or thinking or doing anything apart from being … well, blissful. The whole government fell because it was so addictive, and in the end, everyone on the upper levels of New New York died from a virus that spread through the patches.” He told her about the undercity and Novice Hame and the Face of Boe, and she felt the joy and fun from earlier melt away. 

“So, that’s how they work. And it’s why we can’t let Grinton get his hands on more of them. So far, he’s used them small-scale, only in combination with whatever he used to let people dream about him. It was pure luck that he didn’t have any more patches for Lust, and that he’s … well, in his own very twisted, very despicable way not a person who just takes what he wants by force. By real force,” he added before she could interrupt. He’d guessed what she wanted to say and judging by the dark look on his face, he felt like she did on the subject. “If by any chance he has more now, and maybe something worse, something more sinister than ‘Lust’, I really don’t know what will happen.”

“That’s why you don’t care if Torchwood lets him disappear?” she asked, because she’d wondered about his words on the phone. 

“No,” he said, carefully shaking his head. He turned on his side and sat up a little so he could look at her eye to eye. “No. That’s because he took _you_:”

Rose had to look away but she gripped his hand, hoping he’d understand. He took hers and pressed it to his heart, then sighed a weary sigh. 

“If he already has those patches, I can probably tune something so it can detect them. They’re artificial and from another time – they’re bound to give out some kind of signal we can detect. I should probably get to it right now…”

She put her hands against him to hold him in place. “Right now, you’ll lie here and wait. If – when – Pete comes, I’ll have words with him and then I’ll tell him what you said and _then_ you might start working on the thingy with the thing. You’re concussed and bruised, I want you to be healthy as soon as possible.”

He stared at her until she blushed, then he smirked. “Oh, you do, don’t you? What, pray tell, do you want me to be healthy for?”

From the bed came a growl. “Oi, love-birds, can you stop your twittering and let me sleep? You’ve been at it for hours now, I deserve some bloody rest for driving the bloody car through the bloody night to get this bloody, bleeding dumbo to Cardiff. Now – shut up!” 

Rose decided a kiss would be silent enough.


	25. Chapter 25

Shortly after Torchwood’s arrival at the hotel, Rose had snatched up Pete and pulled him outside to the parking-lot. Which is where the two of them were now, arguing loudly with lots of hand-waving and angry gestures. 

“That’s quite impressive,” Donna said, watching from the window. He’d watched, too, at first, but now he was on the bed, calibrating the settings and properties of the sonic. “There must be a whole lot of issues to get rid of, considering they’ve been at it for fifteen minutes now.”

“Must be,” he muttered. “She thought he doesn’t feel anything for her.”

Donna snorted. “Yes, because that’s the reason he was so bloody worried that he was prepared to shake her thereabouts out of your addled mind.” 

He looked up and her and smiled. “She’ll be fine. They’ll be fine. He’s … he’s quite a good man, normally, and as long as Rose has a go at him, he won’t distract me from my work.” Donna turned away from the window and sat down next to him. 

“What is it you’re doing, anyway?”

“See? That’s exactly what I mean with ‘distracting.” 

“Oi! Watch it, spaceman.”

“Oi, watch it, Earth-girl.” His answer was instantaneous, and the sharp pain it caused took him by surprise. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Habit.”

“Hm.” Donn nudged his shoulder with her own. “’s alright. I don’t mind being an Earth-girl.” 

If he ever found a way to do it, he’d take Donna Mott out to the stars. Show her the wonders of this universe, make her believe in herself even more than she did now, make her believe in the beauty of it all, make her see, make her come alive in more ways than being stuck on Earth ever could. Sure, you could have plenty of adventures on Earth, on the Slow Path. But there was a limit one would inevitably reach, and he was used to never reaching his own limitations. It still burned in him, maybe even more than in the Doctor. The desire to run, to jump higher than anyone else ever had, to fly. To be free, utterly free. And he’d always found so much happiness, sheer joy in witnessing the moment his companions arrive at the same mental state, seening them bloom into their true selves, become _more_ by being their pure, essential selves in every place they’d visited. 

He was curious, so curious to see how this Donna would differ from the other Donna. Because here on Pete’s World, she was already glorious and wonderful, and it stung behind his eyes to remember Donna Noble at her best, as his best friend, as… Donna. 

She noticed the approaching tears and looked rather stunned, and quickly he wiped his face. “Sorry. Bit… sorry.”

“I already knew you were a bit emotional, mate. Don’t worry about it. Just… yeah.” Awkwardly, she patted his shoulder. “Oh, that sounds like they’re on their way up.”

True, the footsteps in the hallway were accompanied by the voices of Rose and Peter Tyler. He could just about hear the words. _”Now don’t you go be a twat again, Pete. I’m completely fine and he’s not, so you can stick your alpha-grumpiness somewhere unreachable to get it out another day.”_

“I really like your woman, spaceman,” Donna snickered. “She’s the right kind of woman for someone like you.” 

And while he would have loved to find out what she meant with ‘someone like you’, he wholeheartedly agreed that Rose was the right woman for him. 

The door opened and he decided to skip any kind of awkwardness or ‘serious conversation’. He’d had enough of them. “Right,” he said instead before anyone could open their mouths, “I have changed the setting of the sonic, it should detect the future now. It’s not quite that it can detect time, or rather the wrongness of time, but I remembered the exhaust-fumes from New New York – I did tell you about the motorway, didn’t I, Rose?” She nodded, but he’d have continued anyway. “Well, they have of course completely different exhaust to what we have nowadays. Different planet, different resources after all. I tuned the screwdriver to two possible molecules that would be detectable and alien enough to differentiate from ourtime’s fuel, and all I need now would be a long-range-aeroscope because frankly, running around with a screwdriver is quite inefficient. Luckily, I know you have one of those on your big SUV, Pete. So …” he looked up at the man “shall we get to it?”

****

Despite Donna arguing that he was still konked in the head and Pete arguing that Donna shouldn’t be there, and Rose arguing that Pete should just shut his gob, they did eventually all bundle into the SUV with the aeroscope that he’d used the time the others argued calibrating into picking up Polycarbon-Hydrchrome and Hydrocarbon-Monochrome.

The aeroscope bleeped and beeped and then told them that indeed plenty of the ‘chromes were stationed in Cardiff and pointed them – very unsurprisingly – towards the Millenium Centre. While driving and being reprimanded by Donna for it, Pete called his team and told them to fence off the area as subtly as possible. 

He really appreciated that thought. Sadly, he’d have to admit that he wouldn’t have thought of it on his own. 

“So, can this thing give us a proper location, or is it like GloPos and only gives you an area the subject is positioned somewhere inside?” Pete asked. 

“It’s not completely accurate, but Grinton – or well, the mood-patches at least – are somewhere on the big lot in front of the Millenium thingy. Which – I know – doesn’t narrow it down that much but it’s still better than saying ‘somewhere in the city’, right?”

Pete nodded tightly. “Suppose so. So, we’ll do as planned – you all stay back, you’re civilians and you, Doc, are injured. We can find him on our own, we know what he looks like and if you give us the sonic screwdriver, we can help locate him much easier.”

He swallowed. Giving Pete – essentially giving Torchwood – the screwdriver felt dangerous. The Torchwood from the other universe had taken everything they’d found and turned it into a weapon, and while he still trusted Pete… ah, well. Live a little, dare a little, he supposed. He handed the sonic over with only a little reluctance and maybe Pete’s and Rose’s look of surprise told him all he needed to know. 

“I promise, we’ll stay right by the car.” Rose said. “And you’ll be careful, too, okay? I don’t want to tell Mom that you suddenly got urges and kissed one of your staff. She’ll never let us live it down.”

They all left the car to have a look over the parking lot. It was big and still moderately filled with cars, but none were leaving and none were coming in. This early in the morning, and in February, there were hardly any people about who didn’t have to work here. 

Donna leaned close to him and Rose huddled into his embrace, maybe for warmth or maybe for some other form of comfort. Maybe out of protectiveness, a trait the Doctor would have found amusing, despite liking it just as much as he did. 

He showed Pete how to use the sonic, and then they were left alone while Pete talked into his radio and gave directions and orders. The three of them stayed outside until it got too cold, then climbed back into the car. Which only improved their moods to about a quarter of a percent, as the car was cold and damp and not built for comfort. Turning on the radio distracted them for about five minutes, until the radio-gameshow ended. 

“I don’t know about you,” Donna suddenly spoke into the silence, “but I’m going in there,” she pointed towards a small bistro that had opened just as they arrived “and get something hot to drink. You two can stay here if you prefer, but this is ridiculous.”

Rose sighed. “I promised him. But I guess he won’t mind us staying dry and warm.”

**** 

The bistro wasn’t full. Only two customers, a pair of chattering elderly ladies, sat at one of the tables in the corner. The staff consisted of a man with dark hair and a dark complexion and the most amazing dark eyes he’d ever seen outside of the t’Hach galaxy, and a young girl with a blue crew-cut. They ordered – tea, coffee and more tea – and while Donna went to the ladies, he sat down with Rose by the window.

They could overlook the parking-lot and a part of the Roald Dahl Plass. Was it even named that here? For a while, they just sat there in companionable silence, watching the people outside and trying to gauge which ones where Torchwood and which ones just ordinary people. He also held Rose’s hand. He really liked holding Rose’s hand. 

“Hey, where’s Donna so long? Her tea’s getting cold.” Rose turned to look towards the toilets, and he felt sudden dread creep up his neck. He stood, barely hearing Rose talk but he kept walking and a moment later, he felt her by his side. The ladies’ was empty, as was the men’s, but there was a back-door for the staff, right next to the shelf with the dirty dishes. Swallowing, feeling his heart in his throat, he opened the door and stepped outside, only distantly aware that he’d left his parka at the seat and was only wearing a t-shirt, his only weapon a mug in his hand. 

“There she is,” Rose said and it sounded like she was relieved but he knew she wasn’t, not really. Well, she was probably as relieved as he was to see Donna still nearby, but it couldn’t be that she was happy with the circumstances.

Because see, Donna was hanging off Trevor Grinton’s neck, and not as a necklace would. She kept kissing the man with passion, chin and neck and shoulder and cheeks. Grinton stood there, barely even touching Donna, facing the door Rose and he had just walked through. He was smirking. 

Anger crept up his spine, taking the same way dread had done earlier. “You should really let her go, Grinton,” he growled. “This will not end well for you.”

“Ah, but it will. Because you, whoever you are, will let me walk away and your fiery little travel-agent here will come with me. And you won’t follow me. But I promise you, she’ll be back with you soon. See, she’s just not really my type. Though she does kiss very well, I must say.”

Rose stepped past him, back ramrod-straight and head held high. “You let her go, you dim-witted leech! You’re so pathetic, you can’t even fight your own battles, have to have a woman to save you, huh? Didn’t your mommy love you enough as a baby?”

Grinton snarled. “Shut up, blondie. You spineless slag, you would have been begging for my attention, just like she is doing now.” He tugged Donna closer, still smirking but angrier. 

“I don’t understand, how can she be interested in you?” Rose was stepping closer, just a little, while challenging Trevor’s manliness. “You look like something even a rat wouldn’t touch, so how come she’s hanging off you. What have you done to her?”

Grinton grinned. “You would like to know that, wouldn’t you? But you wouldn’t understand, there is no way you could understand, and if you could, you dumb bimbo, you’d never believe me.”

“You mean you got yourself a five-billionth’s century date-rape-drug? Did the future also provide you with a gun that lets people dream about you? Because that’d be _really_ unbelievable.” He’d figured out what Rose was doing and diverted attention from her to him. “What? You think you’re the only one? That your stupid dealer is only selling to you? Wow, you’re truly, utterly _dumb_.”

“Oh yeah? Oh _yeah_? And … and you, I should have just cut your throat. But you looked so pathetic, weak and limp. I thought ‘why bother, he’s not going to be a threat’, and wasn’t I right? You’re no threat, you’re just a user, just like me.”

Rose had crept up to Donna, who was still squirming around Trevor and rubbing his arms, chest and places nobody would willingly touch. Now, she lunged and grabbed Donna’s arm, pulling her towards herself. It was enough. Even with his head addled and his temperature lowering towards ‘very cold’, his aim was still Doctor-accurate, and the mug caught Grinton on the bridge of his nose. 

With a yell, Trevor went down and he stalked over to keep him down. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. “Check her arms,” he shouted at Rose, “There must be a patch, like a nicotine-thingy somewhere.”

Trevor whimpered, his nose bleeding heavily and tears running down his face. Rose was right – he was truly pathetic. He felt his anger rise even more, looking at him, imagining him doing things to Rose, to Donna, to all the girls from London he’d found attractive. He felt the urge to kick him, the urge to kick and not stop until the small human was a bleeding, blubbering mess. He might have growled something like that because Grinton cringed and held his hands up high, terrified. 

A hand landed on his right shoulder. “Don’t,” Rose said. “He’s not worth it. Pete will deal with him, he’s not far. Donna is fine, we’re both fine. Don’t… just don’t.”

His hands were twitching, urging him to do something, hit something, strangle something. “You mean he deserves mercy?” he bit out, and another voice spoke from his left side. 

“No, of course not. He doesn’t deserve anything. But mercy’s not so much about the recipient, now, is it, spaceman? It’s about you, about who you are.”

“Yes,” Rose said. “Because it’s easy, showing mercy when you feel they deserve it. The hard part, the part that shows everyone who you are, is being merciful when you don’t think they deserve it at all.”

He took a breath so deep that he could feel the stitches on his chest stretch and sting. The air was cold and damp, and he wanted nothing more than this small, despicable creature to disappear from the face of the world, preferably screaming all the way. 

He remembered feeling like that before. Remembered the overwhelming hatred upon seeing the last Dalek. Later, he recalled that hate whenever he saw them, mixed with fear and terror that nobody, not even the humans being slaughtered around him, could _possibly_ understand. For their understanding of the Daleks was simple, straightforward. Daleks killed, and that was enough to fear them. But he, the Doctor, had known the Nightmare Child, had seen what the Daleks could do, had witnessed the Skaro Degradations and fought them, seen what they caused his people to do in the effort to win. Had killed and killed and killed and _killed_ without having time to show remorse and sadness over the lives lost all around him, no time to mourn his brothers and sisters by his side. And while there already had been plenty of terrible wars in the world, and plenty of people understanding the tragedy and horror of the fights, what a Time Lord felt was still worse. Because Daleks hadn’t just killed and slaughtered. They’d twisted time itself into a pulsing, disturbing, sickening mass of knots and loose ends. They’d butchered and raped the timelines of entire civilizations, of individuals and of whole planets just so time would bend to their needs. It had been nauseating to even attempt a look at the Matrix, and Gallifrey as a whole had been forced to cut themselves off from it. But though now, as a human, he should feel similar, without access to it, back then it had still been there and present, and its sickness had bled through whenever one wasn’t careful.

Nobody alive could truly understand the murderous rage he’d felt seeing the last Dalek, and nobody could understand what it had done to him to have Rose step in front of the pathetic creature and make him _see_ it. Make him look, make him … understand, maybe. 

It was the reason for his anger at Harriet Jones for murdering in the believe of necessity, killing a threat that was already beaten. The Doctor had regretted taking her down like he’d done, but more, he’d been saddened by her decision. He’d understood it, of course he had! But how had Donna put it? ‘Showing mercy is not about them, it’s about who you are and what you want to stand for’. At the time, at that Christmas, in his new body that he’d not even known yet, the Doctor had understood in his guts what that meant. He’d understood that the message Harriet Jones had sent out to the universe was threatening and dangerous. ‘We are here and we will not show mercy to our enemies, not even in victory’, she’d told the galaxy, and what the Doctor regretted most was that he’d not been patient enough to make her understand what her actions would mean. 

He had lashed out in anger, and who knew what would have been different had he not done so. 

Harriet had thought it necessary. As a result, she’d lost her government and the Doctor’s respect. What would he lose were he to lash out at this pathetic human being, cowering in front of him, afraid of getting physically attacked? 

What _right_ did he even have to do anything to him? He’d not been threatened or violated, only knocked out a little. If anyone deserved to decide what to do, it would be any of the women who hopefully would never understand that the night spent with Trevor had been more sinister than an error of judgement on their parts. Or Rose. Or Donna.

Donna.

He turned around. “Are you alright, Donna?” She was pale, her arms wrapped across her chest to protect herself. If from the chill or the memory of the last few minutes, he couldn’t say. “Let’s get you inside, get you a cuppa. A new one, yours got cold, sorry.” 

“S okay. I’d rather have something stronger to wash the taste of this ball of slime off my tongue. Yikes.” 

He was thinking about how to tie up their little villain when Pete stepped out from the bistro, gun in hand. “So that’s what you call ‘waiting in the car’, is it?” He heaved a breath, pretending to be annoyed but his eyes were hard and cold and never left Grinton. “How about you let the grown-ups handle this now?”

“Gladly,” he replied and offered Donna his left and Rose his other hand. “I hear Siberia is a nice place to be forgotten in.”


	26. Chapter 26

Rose sat in the seat across from Donna and … well, him. Looking at him now, all attentive and sweet and a little clumsy in his attempts to make Donna feel better about what the patch of mood-drug had made her do, anyone would be hard-pressed to believe he’d been seconds away from going postal on Trevor. 

Not that she thought the Leech didn’t deserve a punishment, and she wouldn’t have minded getting in a few knocks here and there. Jack certainly would have not hesitated to kick Grinton in the nads, and she would have not even raised her eyebrows. 

But that was the thing, that was the difference. Jack could be more violent and ultimately prepared to do what he thought necessary, no matter what it would do to him; but the Doctor, and therefore, she was sure, he, was different. 

Where Jack could put the dark things he did away and deal with them when necessary, she didn’t think the Doctor was really capable of that. He just put them away, and never dealt with them. And now and then they’d peak out from his bigger-on-the-inside-mind and threaten to overwhelm him. She didn’t know all what the Doctor had done, or gone through in his long life. She didn’t think it was necessary. She knew him, as the person he was when she met him first, and as the person when he regenerated. He was kind and excited and so emphatically against violence that she couldn’t imagine what it would do to this man’s mind if she’d let him follow his anger and do what he so clearly wanted to do. 

She could have done it, Donna might have, and Jack certainly could. But not him. Not without losing more than he’d gain, and the loss would weigh heavy on him. _You made me better_, the Doctor had said to her, and she was starting to understand what he meant. 

There were still long roads to travel, and she intended to travel them with him at her side. He already carried memories she had no idea of, things that had been done by him but not by _him_ and to him and not to _him_. Topping them with extra-baggage from things he would hate himself for, come time, would only serve to make the road bumpier than necessary. 

Rose looked across to where Pete had entered the bistro again, apparently done with apprehending Grinton. Through the window, she saw two Torchwood-agents shove a handcuffed Trevor towards one of the cars. 

“Alright. That’s done now.” Huffing, Pete took the last available chair and sat down, snatched one of the biscuits and stared into nothing for a bit. He visibly shook himself when he realized he was being stared at by everyone at the table. “Right, sorry for coming so late. Doc, your aero-thing sent us to the biggest accumulation of those chemicals-“

“Polycarbon-Hydrchrome and Hydrocarbon-Monochrome,” he was interrupted, but Pete continued as if he hadn’t heard.

“-which were close to the rift but not with Grinton. That was … unfortunate,” he looked at Donna, who shrugged and smiled. “But it gave us the opportunity to catch the person selling the patches. Turns out, currency from our time will be a very valuable, sought-after antique in the future.”

“How did he get through the rift?” His head had snapped up from where it had been studying the silverware, only half listening until now. Interest, like a dog getting the scent of something to eat, had him look eager and completely focused. Rose was definitely interested in that answer as well.

“There seems to be a modulating tunnel from one rift – ours – to another in what’s it called, New New York. He simply waited for the right time and stepped through. There’s a window of a few minutes, he said, where he can step right back. He’d have to wait ten days if he gets stuck on this side. Unfortunately for him, we caught him and we think he’ll be very happy we will provide him with accommodation for a few years in ye-olde-good-times.” Pete didn’t look very sad about that turn of events. “He might get a valuable insight into the 21st century. Could make a fortune once he gets back.”

“What’s his name?” Rose asked. “Just… out of curiosity.”

“Uh…” Pete looked at his notes, “Richarth – yes, with a ‘th’ – Growthworth. Ever heard of him?” He was studying first her face, then his but seemed satisfied when they both shook their heads. “Miss Mott… I would very much like you to sign this NDA. I know this has been very exciting and also unpleasant, but it would be … not good for the public if you were to talk about all that has happened today.” Pete slid a piece of paper with a lot of words over to Donna, who took it and started to read. 

“Now, Pete…” But Rose nudged his shin and shook her head. Pete was right, especially because it would make Donna seem like a lunatic. She couldn’t want that. Surprisingly, he backed down and started to study the text over Donna’s shoulder. 

“Rose…” Pete started but faltered. “I…” She sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for a serious conversation right now. She wanted her own clothes, another shower, hot chocolate and a long sleep in her own bed, preferably not alone. 

“Let’s talk about this another day. I’ll come over once Mom is out shopping, okay?” she asked, and she only realized when she saw Pete’s relieved smile that she’d already confirmed any chasms between them could be mended. Damn, she’d wanted to let him squirm a bit longer.

“Good! Now, Doc – this was the device he used to get people’s dreams influenced. Ever seen something like this?” Pete handed a gun-like metal thing over, secured in a plastic bag. It looked very much like every gun from stupid science-fiction movies, and Rose couldn’t believe something barmy like this would actually work.

He looked at it and turned it over in his hands, then shook his head. “No, sorry. Never seen anything like that. But I’ve not been long in New New York, so … I can have a look at it at work, if you want.”

“That’ll be great, thanks. See you all, and Rose… let me drive you two home, alright?”

She nodded, grateful. 

Rose felt a hand on hers and looked up into his face. His left eye was starting to look nearly black now, and the growing bruise along his hairline didn’t exactly help the ‘domestic violence’-look he was sporting. Donna looked at them and rolled her eyes. 

“Right. Here. Signed, Mr Tyler. I never saw you, don’t know you from Adam and now if you’ll excuse me, you will provide me with a very, very competent driver so that I can go back to London to fall asleep ‘till tomorrow, when I’m going to have to tell my boss that I was too sick to call in. Thank you all so very, very much for a lovely day. Night. You know what I mean.” She stood up and sternly put her hands on her hips. With an expertly executed motion of her head, she threw her hair behind her neck and walked away. For a second, Rose thought that was it, Donna’d had enough of them. But before she could call her back, she saw his face and the small smile, the cheeky one, the secret one. The one that told her that he was completely happy and everything would be alright. 

Rose decided to get the truth about that smile later.


	27. Epilogue

Since the Grinton-adventure, he could honestly say his life had turned to the better. Not so much that everything changed. Not at all, really. 

His bruises had faded and so had the headache, the cut had healed nicely and he had nearly driven everyone around the bend because surely, it couldn’t take _that_ long for a body to heal. Seriously, how did humans _cope_? But everyone assured him that yes, it did take that long, no, he wasn’t in danger of dying from complications and yes, it was completely normal to have this kind of fallout whenever he got his scull broken. 

He’d decided to avoid it in the future.

Rose had wholeheartedly approved of his decision, but for some reason didn’t seem convinced that he’d manage to hold on to his resolution. Well… maybe she had a point. 

After her kidnapping, Rose’s bruises around her wrists had turned a dark, nasty colour and he’d taken every opportunity to rub leopard’s bane-cream on them to make them heal quickly. And to assure himself that they were indeed healing and that she wouldn’t one day develop sudden blood-poisoning and die at night, while he was asleep. Rose called him ‘daft’ and ‘barmy’ for avoiding sleep, but it wasn’t like he’d slept _well_ until the bruises visibly faded.

She’d quit her job at the clothing-shop and was reluctant to tell him that she wanted to work with Torchwood, so that was different, too. He wondered how long it would take her to make up her mind and what kind of arguments she would use to convince him that it was a good idea. 

He didn’t think it was, but he was also certain that Torchwood could only turn out to be a good thing if people like her worked for it. The more of them, the better. She didn’t need his permission anyway, but he found it nice that she wanted his approval.

Other than that, nothing really changed. Except _everything_ changed. Donna was firmly setting herself into their lives, as a valuable friend and a confidant and … well, no. The word ‘friend’ really said it all. They met for lunch every week, not always all three of them but he made sure to always be there. He even managed to set a periodic alarm so he wouldn’t miss one of their dates, because his own internal clock was still completely out of whack. 

Work was the same, except every now and then, Pete would turn up and ask him if he’d seen such-a-thing before or knew something about that-a-thing, and he was always happy to provide answers or look for them if he couldn’t – and lead them on false tracks when necessary. So far, he’d managed to hide the purpose of two very, very dangerous devices and disabled them into nothing more than children’s toys that blinked and bleeped and vibrated in funny ways. 

There were things out there that humanity would never be mature enough for. 

Other than those nice little distractions, he tried to use his spare-time to create transdimensional pockets. It was very slow work, but he was proud to say that it seemed indeed possible to one day get it right. Maybe even this year. 

Pete had been careful around him the first few weeks, even a little deferent. It had irked, because he didn’t think it was deserved at all, especially not with him hiding valuable-if-dangerous truths about stuff from Pete. But one day Pete invited him for coffee and simply said he was sorry for calling him a cheap copy. And that he was very glad he wasn’t actually the exact same as the Doctor because – and here he’d mentioned a lot of things, things about Rose and travelling and being arrogant and believing himself to be so much smarter than humans and being too damn bitter to really work with. He took it as a compliment, because it was kinder and because it was probably meant that way.

He didn’t tell Pete that the Doctor simply _was_ that much smarter than humans, and he also didn’t tell him that _he_ was, too. It wouldn’t serve a purpose and Rose would tell him it was rude. How truth could be rude was a puzzle to him, but that was humans for you, he supposed. Always so easily offended by things that were out of their hands. 

And Rose and him? Well. Things hadn’t changed much, really. Rose still mostly did the cooking under protest and scolded him for not being able to. He had advanced from being a menace to their furniture to being able to cook pasta, rice and hard-boiled eggs – pity that he preferred soft-boiled ones – and was nowadays allowed to cut carrots and cucumbers. Provided he peeled them first. They still bickered, had fights now and then and were in each other’s space all the time, which sometimes turned into more fighting. They went to see movies – Indiana Jones with Tom Selleck was very different indeed – and went out to run like mad dogs were chasing them through the park. That usually ended with them falling down panting and laughing and panting even more, and then they went back and got ice-cream.

He preferred strawberry, while the Doctor had always liked vanilla best. 

But where it stayed the same, it also changed. Fights never ended in sulking and one of them leaving. They ended in ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘me, too’ and hugs and kisses – he loved kisses, he really, really did – and at night, things had also _really_ changed. 

Sometimes during the day as well. 

Suffice to say, the Doctor was really missing out, and that he understood Jack Harkness on a whole different level. Humans. The Doctor had admired and loved their creativity, but he’d had only an inkling of an idea about its implications on topics other than art and music.

Now, six weeks after Donna nearly caused him to fall off a bridge, Pete marched into his lab with one of the dreaded (loved) bags in his hands. “Hey Doc,” he said, and there was no lingering pang of falseness at the name, “got something for you. Was found in one of the garbage-dumps outside Swindon. Definitely not from here or at least, not yet. Have fun, and don’t forget Sunday. Jackie will be livid if you forget Tony’s birthday.”

He left and when he unpacked the carefully wrapped artefact, his breath stopped and his heartbeat was the only sound he could hear. The voices in the corridor outside were like the murmur of the sea on a pebbled beach, the world turned dim around him and reason seemed to slip through his fingers. 

On his desk, battered and nearly but not quite, not to him, unrecognizable, broken but with time and patience possibly – no, probably ,– no, _inevitably_, he would make it so! - fixable, was a timevortex-manipulator.

Oh, he couldn’t wait to tell Rose.

The End and the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from T.S. Elliot "The naming of cats"
> 
> Full quote:   
*The naming of cats is a difficult matter,  
it isn't just one of your holiday games* 
> 
> Brownie-points if you understand why I chose it ;-) 
> 
> If you find any grave errors, please let me know.


End file.
